Naruto: Second Chance
by Farhan14
Summary: After sacrificing himself in the fourth shinobi war, Naruto gets a second chance in life. Let's see what will he do with his second chance at life. Disclaimer:I don't own Naruto or any of the characters in Naruto series. I only own the story and my characters. I won't repeat this as it applies to all the chapters Pairing:no idea;smarter Naruto.
1. Prologue Part 1

**PROLOGUE PART 1**

**AT THE SITE OF A WAR**

It was at the end of the war called "The Fourth Shinobi War". The whole field was littered with discarded weapons, dead bodies of various age and sex and big and small craters. At one corner of battle field two persons could be seen.

One was wearing a black&orange jumpsuit, had untamable messy blonde hair, deep blue eyes that told you that he had witnessed far too much even though he looked like he was still in his teens. He had a handsome face. There were three whisker-like marks on his both cheeks. those marks, instead of diminishing it, it increased his beauty.

The other person was wearing a black coat with red clouds in it. Nothing else could be said about him as he was wearing an orange mask.

Both of them were covered in grime and dirt. They looked tired. In fact, they were. They have been fighting for a long time. The blonde boy, with his allies, fought against the masked man and his "ARMY". The end result was that, the blonde boy had won. Now, the blonde boy was standing in front of him ten feet away while his allies stood behind him some distance away from him.

The blonde boy said to the masked man,"It's over. We have finished your army, freed all the beasts, ruined you plan." The boy's voice sounded very tired, but held steely determination in them. In fact he was breathing heavily, almost panting.

He said again,"You have lost..." he paused a bit before saying,"**MADARA**"

Yes, the boy was talking to Madara Uchiha, who is responsible for the **fourth shinobi war**.

In response to his voice Madara simply chuckled a bit. Then he said," It seems I have. My plans are ruined, you have achieved your so called victory. but..." he paused a bit to look into the eyes of the boy with pure hatred and said," you won't be able to enjoy the victory, **NARUTO**."

With that he prepared for a simple but dangerous attack. It was simple because it didn't need much preparation, dangerous because it's power depended on the amount chakra you invest in it.

Now identified blonde Naruto was about to evade that attack when he realized that the attack wasn't intended for him. Because he realized that his allies were behind him and didn't realize that Madara was aiming for those who stood behind him(N). He was betting on the fact that Naruto will try to save them with his body. If he did, he would die. If he didn't then he would lose his allies, which is win-win for Madara.

Naruto hesitated and proceeded to stop Madara from finishing his preparation. But that single moment of hesitation cost him everything. By the time he was about to stop him, Madara was finished. "**NOW DIE**" he said just before launching his attack.

Naruto then proceeded to intercept his(M) attack with his own **RASENGAN**. Naruto moved in with his attack and blocked Madara's. Both attacks were clashing against each other.

Naruto's allies were shocked at this sudden development and watched in because certainly they did not expect their enemy to attempt anything against them at this point. And anticipation, well... that's self-explanatory.

Before Launching that attack, Madara put all of his remaining chakra and his life force in this attack. So, after launching it he died immediately.

While Naruto didn't have anywhere necessary amount of time to prepare his attack. But still he proceeded to block his attack. Fighting against his opponent's last attack, he was slowly losing as he was already low in chakra. Normally this would be considered a joke because naruto almost never ran out of chakra because of his vast reserves. But during the battle he depleted most of his reserves.

Now, Naruto has only two choices before him. First, escape the energy blast's path and let allies die. Second, die for them. The choices were pretty simple and easy to understand. So, Naruto made his choice.

In his childhood Naruto earned a lot of titles. One of them being "Konoha's number one unpredictable ninja". Despite having that title, he chose something very predictable, at least for someone like Naruto.

**HE CHOSE DEATH**.

He put all of his remaining chakra into his rasengan. Sure, it would kill him. And powering up his own attack would result in both attacks would result in both attacks exploding. Thus killing him twice.

But it didn't matter, at least they would live. Madara's blast was quite big. It was five meters in diameter. So, naruto made his rasengan smaller and stronger so he could penetrate madara's attack and destroy it inside out along with himself. It took a few seconds to properly adjust the rasengan.

He then proceeded and pushed the rasengan in. As expected, both attacks "blew". That huge surge of energy was slowly destroying his body. It would take a total of 5 seconds for him to be completely destroyed.

In those five seconds, he involuntarily started to think about his life's greatest events. Passing the genin exam, meeting and formation of team 7, first mission to the wave, failing to save Haku, letting Sasuke get cursed, meeting Jiraiya, learning Rasengan, letting the third Hokage die, letting sasuke get away, failing to get him back, Sakura crying to him, letting jiraiya die, letting Neji die, getting Hinata almost killed, letting Tsunade die failing to prevent the war and failing to prevent his friends from dying in the war. Some of these were his happy moments, while the rest were his... failures. He couldn't prevent his failures, and they were slowly eating him away. Oh, how he wanted to fix them, how he wanted to prevent them, how he wanted to do them over again in order to make a different choices.

So, in the last second, he thought something. He thought, "**_I JUST WISH, I COULD GET... ANOTHER... CHANCE_**."

After that, the most strangest thing happened. All the energy around him created from the two attacks started centering around him instead of dissipating like they were supposed to. The energy kept entering his body. His body gradually grew brighter and brighter until it became too bright for anyone to him.

Then without any notice, his body suddenly disappeared, which left most stunned while some couldn't understanding anything. They were too shocked from start to finish and they will remain stunned. Even though no one could understand what happened, they understood one thing. They didn't know if he was alive or not, but they knew one thing. Naruto was **GONE**.

**KONOHA VILLAGE, 10 YEARS AFTER THE APPEARANCE OF THE KYUUBI**

It was after midnight. No kind of activity was expected from the village.

On this day a child was born 10 years ago. Normally a child feels various emotions on this day. Excitement and happiness being the most. But this child was not feeling any kind of emotion like that.

In fact he was experiencing a very powerful emotion that sets every living being on the edge, forces them to become aware of their sorroundings, makes them want to... run away. And that is what the child was doing right now. He was running for his life.

Yes, he was running for his life because he was afraid for his life, afraid of the villagers chasing him, trying to kill him.

Yes, the villagers were chasing him to try and kill him. They were having their annual "Demon Hunting"festival.

You see, 10 years ago on this very day the nine-tail fox **KYUUBI** appeared in this village.

It destroyed more than half of this village. It killed many people of this village, shinobi and civillian alike.

Through the sacrifice of the fourth hokage at the time, the Kyuubi was **killed**. At least that was what everyone was told anyway.

Contrary to common knowledge, the fox was not killed.

Why? Simply because it could not be killed. It was a being that could not be killed.

So, a common question rises, which is, how do you kill something unkillable? the answer is: you don't. You simply lock it up somewhere that it could not be found and pray to God that it never comes out.

That is what the fourth Hokage actually did. He sealed the fox in a new-born child in exchange for his own life.

Coincidentally child hair style and color as the fourth hokage.

Coincidence? not really. but we can get to that later. Right now that very child was being chased by the residents of the same village he lived in.

Why? they hated him.

Why? because they think he is the reincarnation of the kyuubi and they hate him for have lost their loved ones and properties to the fox and now they vent that anger upon that child under the excuse of "SERVING JUSTICE".

They hate him so much that they want to kill him with their very own hands the moment see him.

While they "SERVE JUSTICE" to the evil in the appearance of the boy, as disgusting as it may be for harming much less trying to kill and innocent boy, most village enjoyed it. MOST.

The boy had a few people that actually cared about him but they were almost non-existent when compared to the amount of those who hated could actually count them on two fingers.

Anyway, while the boy was running, he ended up in a dead end "accidentally" and the angry mob caught up to him .

The boy knew almost every corner of this village. He knew almost every secret passage, almost every hidden paths, alley ways of this village. That is how the boy escaped the angry mob so far.

But this time he was not able to escape them. Why? because he was set up, trapped by the very **SHINOBI** that was supposed to protect him.

Yes, all the shinobi of this village were ordered to protect this boy secretly by the re-instated third Hokage. But some of them did not feel like being "obedient" about this particular order.

They would sometimes help the villagers in their attempts in trying to kill the boy, sometimes they would try to kill the boy using various methods. They often involved various traps, poisons and sometimes they would come after him directly. This time, they subtly prevented his escape through their Genjustu(illusion magic)

At the moment the, the boy's back was against a wall, looking at the mob, breathing heavily.

If you take a closer look the boy had deep blue eyes, messy blonde hair, three whisker marks on each cheek and had a facial structure very similar to those of Naruto's. In fact that boy WAS Naruto Uzumaki.

Right now his eyes showed that he was utterly terrified and he was pleading to spare his life. Tears were slowly forming in his eyes.

As he looked at the mob, they stood before him for a few seconds before releasing an angry cry and then proceeded to beat him, stab him, slice him, and finally try to kill him all the while cursing him with many colorful words. The boy was was trying block villagers' attacks but failing very poorly. Soon, he was on his knees, filled with various wounds and bruises and then curled up like a ball from all the pain he received from them.

One of the shinobi that were "supposed to protect him" that were actually responsible for this predicament, deciding it was time to "save" the boy from this predicament, secretly moved through the crowd and stood in front of Naruto.

In his hand was a chakra enchanted kunai. Then he lifted his hand and said,"Die you son of a bitch" before proceeding to stab him in the stomach.

Naruto heard what he said through all this commotion, and when he heard what he said, his mind and body was beginning to fill up with anger.

You see, even though he was an orphan, even though he never met his parents, he still loved his parents. Because he always believed that they loved him. If they didn't love him, then they wouldn't have given birth to him.

So, he naturally became angry at that declaration. Because of his anger, the power of the kyuubi that was inside him, started to flow throughout his body.

His pupils were starting to become red. But before he could even look at that person, the knife was already entering his stomach where the fox was sealed.

Normally a simple chakra enhanced kunai wouldn't damage the seal but it already weakened from Naruto's anger. So, the seal was nearly destroyed.

Red energy started gushing out of Naruto's stomach. Everyone was blown back and knocked unconscious.

Naruto was slowly losing consciousness while the red energy was still gushing out of his body. As his vision was fading, he said something very weakly,"**N..NOT...YET...**" And then his vision became dark immediately.


	2. Prologue Part 2

**PROLOGUE PART 2**

**SOMEWHERE AROUND NARUTO'S MINDSCAPE**

After Naruto Passed out, he found himself in some kind of dark place. He could tell that he wasn't exactly unconscious. Because when he tried to touch himself he could feel his body. But he couldn't move or stand up. Because he was constantly floating.

It felt like the place was an endless sea of darkness and he was right in the middle of it. Everywhere around him was cold. It wasn't a pleasant feeling, it wasn't unpleasant at the same time.

He could tell that he had been in this place for quite a while. For how long? he did not know. Maybe a day, maybe a month, maybe a whole year had passed since came here, he had no idea about it.

As he was floating he could not think much, he could not truly focus on anything. As if he was in a daze. It was truly a wonder how he could even feel his existence. Why was it that he could feel his existence? He couldn't answer that because he couldn't think any further.

Because at that moment he noticed something. At one corner of the place he was in, he could feel something. There was something there in the corner of the place.

The presence of that thing was much bigger than himself. He couldn't tell whether that thing was good or bad, only that it was familiar.

As he became curious about it, he started moving(floating?) towards that place. There was something he did not notice. Something important.

Ever since he discovered his thoughts became much more clear. His thinking became sharper than before. Even though he retrieved most of his thinking capacity, he didn't notice it.

Simply because he was too much focused on trying to get to that presence. He felt that he needed to go there. He felt that if he went there, he might just find something. That something was almost pulling him there. Almost as if that "Something" was calling.

Yes, that's right. It was calling him to go there. After thinking those, He pushed himself with more power.

He tried to get closer to "it" faster. The closer he got the faster he tried to move. He kept pouring more and more power into his movements so that he could get there faster.

As he was getting close to his destination, an image popped into his mind. Because of it, he stopped completely. It was an image of his battle against Madara. But he didn't even try to recognize it.

He simply shook his head ignored it for going towards his destination in order to see what is "calling" him. Once he started moving towards his destinations again, a few more images popped up in his head.

One of them was of him defeating a certain member of Akatsuki.

Again he ignored them and started moving towards his destination again. At the moment those images did not mean anything to him. He felt that he needed to go to his destination more than anything and he wanted to achieve it more than anything at the moment.

So, he started moving again. After moving forward for a moment he stopped. To be more accurately he had to stop. Because of the new images.

This time it was not a few images. It was a continuous flow of images. The sheer amount of those images was too much for him to handle. But surprisingly he did not feel any pain.

Instead he felt an immense burden upon his whole existence. It was suffocating. While enduring that burden, he looked at his "destination".

Immediately he felt fear akin to running out time very quickly. He felt that If he waited any longer he would lose "it" forever.

So, despite all the burden, he moved forward. He kept moving forward until he reached his "destination". The moment he reached his "destination" he tried to touch "it".

But before he could touch it, something happened. Something VERY STRANGE happened. His body started breaking apart and the broken pieces started fly towards "it". When he looked at "it" , the same thing was happening. "It's" broken pieces were flying towards Naruto. To be accurate, Naruto's broken pieces. The broken pieces of both Naruto and "it" were mixing together.

Upon seeing this, Naruto fearing for his life(existence?) tried to get away. he was being pulled towards it.

More of their broken pieces started separating from them and merging together. Naruto was being dragged close and being constantly broken.

As he was getting closer he could almost make out it's figure. Now, for some reason, he started to focus on "it" than on his disintegration. Perhaps it was curiosity, perhaps it was simple resignation, that will be left unknown.

As he was getting closer he could almost tell the shape of it's face. By then over half of Naruto's body was disintegrated and the same happened to "it's" body. Soon he was close close enough to see "it's" face clearly. The moment Naruto saw "it's" face, recognition crossed his face. He said, "**Y-You...how...**". But before could even finish what he was going to, his body completely disintegrated and merged with it's broken pieces.

**IN THE OUTSIDE WORLD**

The moment Naruto woke up, his eyes were blinded by bright light. He groaned a bit and started turning around in his bed. After a minute he woke up.

You see, Naruto was never a morning person. He slept as late as possible and woke up as late as late as possible. So, he always had a "bit" of trouble waking up early in the morning.

Now, he woke up and sat straight on his bed. He rubbed his eyes a bit and opened them.

The very first thing that caught his sights were white walls. Naruto became slightly annoyed. Because he is woken up by white(light), then he is greeted by white again(wall, curtain, bed).

After getting past the annoyance, he looked around and immediately recognized the place as an infirmary room. He tried to think why he was in the infirmary.

Suddenly he remembered how the fourth shinobi war ended. He almost shouted,"That son of a bitch Ma..." before he could complete what he was saying, the door to his right burst open.

Why he didn't notice the door earlier? because the door was also painted white and it blended with the surrounding... environment.

But that wasn't what surprised Naruto the most. What surprised him was the person standing in front of the door. It was the third Hokage who was supposed to have died during Orochimau's attack.

The hokage quickly made his way to Naruto's bed and sat on it. He looked into Naruto's eyes and asked with a small smile,"how are you feeling Naruto?"

The whole time Naruto was staring at him with wide eyes. The person in front of him was supposed to have died a long time ago. Yet, he was still alive AND in front of him.

Memories of the good times he spent together with the Hokage started flooding his mind. His eyes started tearing up. He barely croaked out,"ji...ji". As soon as those words left Naruto's mouth, he quickly grabbed onto the Hokage's waist and wrapped his arms around him tightly.

He thought that this could be a dream. But right now he couldn't care less. Then he started crying. First there was almost silence. Then he started crying louder and louder. He cried for a long time.

During this whole time the hokage held onto Naruto tightly so he would feel safe. There, like that, Naruto cried for almost an hour. After that he became tired and fell asleep. After that the hokage tucked Naruto in the bed and left the room quitely while giving the Doctors, Nurses and the ANBU's various orders.

After everyone left the room Naruto immediately woke up. He never really fell asleep. After seeing the hokage for the first time after his death, he became emotionally overwhelmed and started crying.

After the initial outburst, he was able to calm down and was able to think clearly. He decided he needed to be alone in order to asses his current situation.

So, he pretended to fall asleep and let the others leave. After waking up, he looked at the door. Making sure that there was no one on the other side of the door, Naruto tried to get down from the.

He was surprised that he had quite a hard time getting from the bed. After getting down, he checked his body. It seems he has gotten smaller.

He panicked and immediately ran to the mirror at one corner of the room to check out his body much more clearly. Why didn't he notice the before? same reason.

When he stood before the mirror, one thing became clear. He did not like what he was seeing. His body looked like it had reverse-aged and became like that of a ten year old. He looked exactly like when he was ten years old.

He began muttering," I swear, if this is one of Madara's...". He began trailing away when he noticed something.

You see, at first he thought that he was under some complex illusion. But for most complex illusions, once the target/victim starts to realize that they are under an illusion, the illusion starts to break. But right now, the case seems to be different. Our Naruto may have realized that this is an illusion, but there seems to be no sign of the illusion being broken.

So, Naruto thought that this is one of the other type of complex illusions. So, he decided to break this illusion by controlling his chakra.

He put his hands together and made a hand seal. He tried molding his chakra in order to break the illusion.

His first attempt failed. He failed at simply molding his chakra. While trying to mold chakra, he felt a sense of unfamiliarity. He simply shrugged it off. Then he made his second attempt. Still he failed again, again came the sense of unfamiliarity. Again he shrugged it off thinking that it must be the effect of the illusion. But at the third attempt, he was able to properly mold his chakra.

While molding, he thought about that sense of unfamiliarity. The chakra flow in his body was quite different from all his life. In comparison, it felt like before his body was like copper wire for chakra. Now it's like silver wire for it. His chakra flowed much more smoothly throughout his whole.

That's why he failed at his first two attempts. He wasn't exactly familiar with his... new body. Yes, it's like that. The difference between before and now is that he has a... new body.

After finishing this he noticed that the illusion wasn't broken even after molding chakra for a while. So, he stopped molding chakra and tried to find other methods on breaking illusions.

The result was: nothing.

He couldn't find a single thing on breaking illusion. So, the only conclusion left was... he could be back in the past.

He quickly shook his head to dispel that. There is no way that is possible. He looked out the window and saw the same scene of what it would've looked like his village when he was ten years old. Then he moved to the bed and sat on it in a lotus position, closed his eyes and started thinking.

Yes, the great Naruto Uzumaki THINKS. Enough of that. Now he tried to remember what happened up to this point. He remembered the war, killing the akatsuki, going to various countries and saving princesses/priestesses, fighting pain, training with the frogs, jiraiya's death, jiraiya's training and everything up to when he was 10 years old.

That's where everything started becoming weird. When he looked at any event of his life before that point in life, he would at least find two sets of memories. One set was what he was familiar with. And other was new to him. He started looking at those memories.

The memories were of himself, at the same time they were not. As if those memories were of "another naruto" but different. That Naruto lived a much harsher life than "this" Naruto.

He was tortured/beaten thrice a week. Naruto cringed upon "remembering" the torture methods. Even a demon would not use those methods on a child, much less an innocent child.

Then he saw the Annual "Demon Hunts". Then he remembered the assassination attempts, at least some of them. Then he remembered how the children in the academy treated him, how he was over-priced for everything he bought, kicked out from the shops, kicked out from the orphanage by being framed for a non-existent crime.

In comparison to these "this" Naruto's life was heaven. Tears were slowly forming in his eyes. They were the result of anger and sadness from watching those memories. But he refused to cry. He forced his tears back in. Just as he had enough of these "memories", he felt a pull. It was quite a familiar "pull". So, he resigned himself to it. Then, he felt as if he was falling.

**INSIDE THE SEAL**

When he woke up, he stood up and looked around. He knew that he was inside the seal. Because he saw the familiar scene of the sewage.

Filled with dark water and the whole place was dark. He looked around and saw the gigantic cage with the seal on it.

He knew that it was Kurama that called him to this place. He felt Kurama's presence in the cage.

It was the same same presence, but something was lacking. He honestly didn't was "kidnapped" to this place and he wanted to get out of here as soon as possible.

So, he started walking to the cage expecting to meet Kurama.

When he reached the cage, he couldn't see anyone or anything there. He looked inside the cage and saw something he was certainly not expecting.

What he saw was, sitting inside the cage, was a WOMAN. She looked like she was in the final days of her teenage years. She had fiery red, wavy hair that was long enough to almost touch the floor. She was taller than the average women. She had the right curves in the right places and her "assets" were quite bountiful, both front and back. Her face held a mischiveous look. her eyes had red pupil, long slits and held a calculative gaze.

Upon seeing these, he immediately noticed something About "HER" had the same presence as kurama. But instead of being outright evil and terrifying, it exuded more mischiveousness, like that of someone someone who liked to play pranks people. It wasn't as if the "evil" feeling was absent. It was just weak. That's how she felt right now. She felt like kurama, but a less evil version of it.

Soon, she started walking towards Naruto. She kept walking until she stopped right in front of naruto. The only thing that stood between them were the bars of the cage. They kept looking at each other for at least a full minute. there was silence all around them.

She was the first one break the silence by saying, "Hello Naruto". Her voice was gentle but it held authority at the same time. Naruto asked,"Who are you?". She said," You don't remember me?". naruto said," uhhh... not really" The woman said, " Ah yes, I believe this is the first time we've met in this form." _**This** **form?!**_" his eyes narrowed at that thought. Then she continued," I am the nine-tailed fox that has been living inside you." his eyes started to widen. "My name is Kurama" his eyes were widened to the limit and his brain stopped working altogether._  
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	3. Prologue Part 3

**PROLOGUE PART 3**

**INSIDE THE SEAL**

Upon hearing Kurama's declaration Naruto could only show only one reaction. his right eye was twitched while his left brow rose as high as possible. He couldn't say anything for a while. After some time, He simply shouted, "YOU! you're the nine-tailed fox ? I thought he was a guy!"

In response Kurama said " That is what you people thought about me. even though I give off a masculine aura in my true form, I am actually a female." Naruto asked while maintaining the same facial expression, " HOW?!"

Then Kurama said, "Well Naruto, when we talled beasts are born we are neither male nor female. We are actually genderless. Our gender is determined based on our personality. After accumulating centuries worth of experiences we finally gain our sex. If the masculine side of our personality is more dominant then we gain the body of a man. But if our feminine side of our personality is more dominant then we get the body of female. So that is why I am standing in front of you as a female. Even though our gender is finally determined, we don't completely throw our opposite side. Some traits of our opposite sex remains."

After listening to that Naruto could not say anything for a while. He could only think, "_WHO IS THIS LADY IN FRONT OF ME!? THIS IS NOT KURAMA I KNOW_" Then he stared thinking about everything that's happened so far. Ever since he woke this morning everything felt the same but slightly different. The hokage felt slightly different, Narotu's body that felt different, his extra set of memories(even though they were so horrible that he could not believe that they were actually his), and now new and improved(?!) Kurama. When he was older, Naruto once read a manga where the protagonist had traveled into the past. but insted of travaling to the past of his own world he travel into the past of a different world which was very similar to his own world. An alternate reality. He even woke up in a younger version of his body with all his memories. Now the very same thing has happen to Naruto. Luckily he read that manga even though he was not very interested in that manga at that time. But thanks to reading that manga he can explain his current sitution. If this **IS **really a different reality in the past which is very similar to his then he can prevent a lot of things he regrets. For example: **HIS FIRST KISS**. Yeeaahhh, Naruto still has nightmares about it. Anyway, if this is a different world then that also explains why Kurama is a female here. Then Naruto thought,"**_Did I ever try to find out whether "that" Kurama was a girl or a guy?"_**. He already began planning on how to shape this world to his preference.

He was suddenly brought out of his thinking by Kurama when she interrupted him saying, "Since you defeated me in battle I will help you as much as I can in anything you need" What she didn't mention was that that wasn't the real reason she was helping. She was helping him because she felt slightly guilty about Naruto suffering because of her. She saw and heard through Naurto's eyes and ears how he was hated, beaten, tortured. Even though she was evil, she couldn't bear that the person she was living inside of was harmed because of her.

Hearing that, Naruto's genius answer was, "Huh?!" He was thinking along the lines of,'what is she saying?'. He could clearly remember that the first time he fought against Kurama was when he was 12 years old. Even though it could not be called a battle, it was still a battle regardless. Right now he was only 10 years old, so when did he exactly fight against the damn fox!?

Upon hearing that question Kurama only look at him with surprise clearly written all over her face. "You don't remember ?"

Naruto slowly shook his head.

kurama slowly shook her head while sighing. Then she said,"I expected something like this to happen. Don't worry you'll get your memories back in time." She doesn't need to say any more, because he will know everything that is needed when he gets his memories back.

Then Kurama said," Anyway, it's time for you to go back." With that she pushed Naruto out of the seal and into the living world.

**THE REAL WORLD**

Once Naruto came back to the real world, he saw that only a few minutes passed, no one was in his room and he was sitting in the same position. The he thought,"_ I'm in the past. I know about the future. Well, for the most part anyway, because this is a different reality. Anyway, HERE, I can do ANYTHING I want." He started grinning like a madman. "Get ready everyone, coz here comes the new and improved Naruto Uzumaki." With that he let out an evil laugh._

**IN THE SEAL**

"Even though I can't hear that boy's thoughts, judging by his laugh, he has potential to be quite evil. But he will never be my equal in that aspect" Kurama thought with a smirk.

**AUTHOR NOTE: that's the end of prologue. From here on, it will be mostly Naruto's P.O.V.**


	4. Chapter 1

**CHAPTER 1**

**NEAR THE ACADEMY IN KONOHA**

**NARUTO'S P.O.V**

Right now it's morning. The sky has a lot of clouds. The sun is rising. On such a beautiful day, I, Naruto Uzumaki, am happily going to the academy. Yes, I'm happy about going to the academy. Not because I'm going to the academy. NOPE. Because there are some things I have to do at the academy. You see, I've been stuck in the hospital for a few days. It gave me some time to think and search some of "his" memories. I found out that all the friends I've graduated with, are with me, no one was missing. The reason? "Naruto" joined later. So, that makes some things easier. So, I'm going to slowly become their friends and manipulate them from shadows so that they don't end up dead. And at the same time I could "fix" some people that needs fixing **secretly**. Specially Sasuke. He caused a lot of trouble and pain for me. So, he's gonna get the worst of it.

I know, I know, it's not fair because he hasn't done anything like that. YET. But who says that he WON'T do them in the future.

By the time I noticed I was already inside the classroom. I looked around saw a few students there.

Sasuke Uchiha was there and he wasn't brooding all that much which got me a bit surprised. But then I shrugged it off thinking,"_It hasn't happened yet."_

You see, the Uchiha massacre hasn't happened "here" yet. But I'm already getting the signs of it happening VERY soon. You see, "that" Naruto had quite a friendly relation with Mikoto Uchiha, Sasuke's mother. Since she was "his" mother's best friend, she took care of "him" from time to time. They became very close over time. At first it was just hi and hello. Soon it became like she comes over at least twice a week to cook for "him". They shared many things with each other. They tell each other of their daily lives. She tells him about her family secrets(not the dangerous ones of course) that she would tell only to her closest friends. And "he" tells him about his daily life, even though it's the watered down and sugar coated version of it.

Anyway, she mentioned that her husband and sasuke was getting distant with her. Which wasn't really a surprise. Because her husband became a douchebag ever since he started planning the Uchiha's revenge and he has been planning it for a long time. Sasuke became distant like that since he was being trained by his father personally. If you spend too much "private" time someone, they start to rub off on you(In every way possible. Now I'm starting to get just** why **he went with the gender confused pedophilic hermaphrodite). So it's a no-brainer why sauke is distant and showing symptoms of being in the early stages of emo-ism.

Now, what got the "foolish" me attentive was when she said something about Itachi Uchiha, her other son, who is a member of the ANBU black ops, acting strange around them for a while. That got me thinking,"_Uh-oh, it's gonna happen pretty soon"_

So, yeah. Sasuke's gonna get it pretty soon. I pray to the Gods that he doesn't go all emo. But with my luck, it's bound to be unheard. Seriously is it just my luck or are Gods just lazy? They never listened to my prayers as far as I remember[ a certain goddess heard that and became _**slightly**_ irritated. But Naruto doesn't need to know that]

Onto the next person. This time It's Sakura Haruno and Ino Yamanaka.

Ahhh, the ever so loyal fan girls of sasuke. I don't really care much about sakura. coz she gave me a lot of trouble and betrayed me during the war in my last life(not cheated, mind you). So, I'm not gonna help her much during this time. Anyway, She says she wants to be he clan's very first kunoichi. But I doubt that. She would've been a far better kunoichi if she never started chasing sasuke.

Now, Ino, she is interesting girl with a good head on her shoulders. She is smarter than sakura( _which i__s a bit funny since sakura's the smartest girl in class_). And she has pride and dignity. So, yeah. i'm gonna help her become stronger. Her Family, the Yamanaka clan specializes in the mind control jutsus and her father works part-time as a torturer.

Still, I pity those two slightly, because they are chasing after someone who will soon fall in love with a pedophilic hermaphrodite. Hmm... maybe i'll send in Jiraiya there for a new novel. He should branch out his tastes a bit.

Next we've got Hinata Hyuga.

She's a pretty cute girl who's just a bit shy. Ok, scratch that. She's too shy to even say her name without saying her name at least stuttering five times. If I didn't know any better, I'd say her shyness is the result of some sort of disease. if I want to fix her I'll have to start with her "shyness". Based on my experience, that's gonna take a lot of work. Yeah, better start making preparations.

Her clan is the Hyuga clan. They're specialty is their doujutsu(eye related ability) called Byakugan and their fighting based on the byakugan. With their byakugan they can see your chakra points(tenketsu) and the internal chakra flow. And their fighting style is hitting those chakra points with their own chakra and blocking the chakra flow. It can either paralyze or kill the target if the user wants to. That's a very good assassination weapon. It's silent and deadly. But thanks to that they started to think that they are all high and mighty AND they're byakugan can see into a person's soul(yeah right) So, the whole Hyuga clan will need a thorough beat-down.

Sitting right next to her is Kiba Inuzuka, harassing her just like usual.

Ahhh, that mutt. Even though he bothered me a lot, he's not completely a bad guy, almost. So, I'm gonna help him but after he gets a thorough beating from me.

His clan is the Inuzuka clan. I don't know much about them except they use dogs as their battle partner and teach them a few jutsus. They mated with dogs to get their special abilities. I'm not entirely sure about that info and I certainly don't want to be sure about that.

Well, that's about it. The rest are on their way to the academy.

So, i say hi to hinata, which got me a stuttering response and an irritated look from kiba. But I ignored him take my seat and immediately started "proposing" to sakura.

You must be thinking why I'm chasing after her when i don't like her one bit. You see, both of "us" chased after sakura when we were young. And I want to keep up a facade trying to act like a fool and in love with sakura, while sharpening my skills behind the scenes. As I said I'll be "fixing" everyone from the shadows. So, I'll need my facade.

After a few minutes of fooling around and "light" beating from sakura for disturbing her time with "sasuke-sama", all the other students started coming in through the door.

First is Choji(his clan has jutsus that temporarily make your body grow bigger). He enters the classroom with a bag of chips, as usual. Then Shino(the Aburame clan, they control bugs) , then Shikamaru(the Nara clan, they control shadows and are master strategists and they are ABSOLUTELY lazy) and the rest.

They took their respective seats and began their usual "pre-class" activities.

For shikamaru, that is... ah, he's already asleep. Well, on to the next one.

Choji is already on his third pack of chips. Really, where does bring them out of?

and shino... is being shino I guess.

After the bell rang, Iruka sensei came in and started his regular lecture.

**15 Minutes later,**

_**"I'M BORED" **_is what i'm thinking right now. you see, I can't do anything right now. and that includes parnking. Right now I'm in "cooldown" period after the last prank I pulled nearly a week ago. So, I can't pull any pranks right now. The teachers are very angry. On the bright side, I can start pranking very soon. So, I have something to look forward to.

Anyway, the reason I was eager to come to class was to asses everyone's situation with my own eyes. I'm not really talking about their skills. I'm talking about their mental state. I'm here to "check them out" so I can determine how I can establish contact with them. My targets are for now are hinata and tenten.

'Why only those two?' you might ask. that's because the way I see it, I can start working on them right now.

'What about the others?' you might ask. Ok, let's start with sasuke, kiba and neji hyuga. those three need a serious beating from me first in order to fix them. sasuke definitely needs more than that, but all three of them needs a through "beatdown". since I can't expose my skills yet and my body is not exactly in "peak" condition right now, so, that's a no-go. shino and choji? I don't know what to do with those guys. shikamaru? frankly, I'm too scared to go anywhere near him lest he sees through my facade. finally Ino, I have absolutely no idea how to help her.

You see, her situation is a difficult one because I can't just walk up to her and say,"hey ino, your chasing after a soon to be arrogant douchebag who has a an ego about the size of mount hokage." why? because before I even get close to her she might punch me in the face and kick me in the "jewels" for even attempting to interrupt her time with her favourite uchiha. So, that's a no-go.

I'll certainly go after tenten, but not now. I need to make some preparations first.

Now that I'm done with the planning, I'm back to being bored again. So, I've decided to start thinking about how girls will look once they grow up. I know I know you did not expect such things from a "mature" naruto. But hey, I'm bored and if I don't focus on _**something**_, then I'll fall asleep. So, I start thinking about how they'll look once they grow up.( _whatever happens next, you can blame the ero-senin next. bcoz he's the one responsible for this change in me_) First is...Sakura. I hate that pink banshee. NEXT

second is Ino. Now that's a girl who's has a lot potential. in the future she will have both looks and skills. by skills i'm not thinking about only fighting skills. I'm also talking about her seduction skills. Let's say in the future she may just acquire the skills to fulfill every man's dream, I thought so from the the way she acts.

Next, We've got Hinata. She may not look it now, but soon she will grow up to be quite the beauty. She will end up with bountiful "assets" and the right "curves".

And finally we have tenten. In the future she will have quite the... wait, since when did I ever care about falling asleep in class.

With that I put my head on table and followed shikamaru who was still sleeping, to the dreamlands.

I woke up hearing the sound of the bell for lunch break. Luckily the teacher didn't bother waking me up during this whole time. I walked out of the classroom to the playground behind the academy building and sat on the swing. Normally I would've been sitting there all alone, feeling sad and lonely. But from now on, I won't be doing something like that because I have somethings that I want to achieve no matter what happens to me.

I start looking around and found the person I was looking for, Hinata. She was looking at me while hiding behind a tree. I waved my hand at her with a smile half expecting her to pass out immediately, and surprisingly she didn't. She just hid behind the tree. After a couple minutes of hiding, she came out again only to hide behind the tree again when I waved and smiled at her again. After she came out, she hid again after seeing me smiling and waving my hand at her. I repeated this process almost throughout the whole lunch break because frankly, I found it quite amusing. When there was only a few minutes left for the lunch break, I left the play ground, ran to the cafeteria, had a snack and walked back to the classroom just in time for the class to start. After the lectures started I slept through the whole class because I already knew what they were going to teach.

After the class was over, I out the classroom while shouting,"yahoo, finally that boring class is over" like an idiot and secretly headed to the forest of death(After going back to the apartment and using the secret pathway under the bed that "he" created) while making sure no one was following me. You're probably wondering why I'm going to such a dangerous place like the "Forest of Death". You see, "that" Naruto lived a much harsher life than me and he was quite smart. Even smarter than me when I was his age. He figured out that he was all alone in this world and no one would help him in anyway. So, he began to help himself. First he began to secretly collect used kunai and shuriken from various training grounds. He kept some of them while selling the rest. Even though he was cheated every time, he knew that that was the best he would get. Soon he began collecting from various dead bodies in the "Forest of Death" He sold those he could sell and kept the rest in his apartment.

He kept doing this for a few months until one day he stumbled upon something in the forest. He found one of Orochimaru's secret underground laboratories. He carefully cleared all the traps inside. He learned to disarm the traps from all the assassination attempts made against him by the ninja that hated him. After every failed attempt, the difficulty and the complexity of the traps became higher. Still, he was able disarm them because he had been seriously studying about disarming traps. Which by the way is quite funny, because every time they tried to kill him with those traps, they actually helped him earn some money. Because after disarming and dismantling them he sold what he could and kept the rest.

After Disarming all the traps inside the lab, which weren't too dangerous for reasons unknown, he checked out the whole lab. After checking around he found he found various weapons, scrolls and half a dozen dead bodies. It seemed that the lab wasn't really an important lab, which why there weren't many dangerous traps there.

So, he moved out all the dead bodies, gave them a proper burial and prayer and made the secret lab his own base where he kept everything important to him and sharpened his skills. That was his first base of operations.

Right now, I am heading there. It was located in a corner of the forest, close to the river but not too close. It's entrance was hidden under the roots of a very old tree. Once I entered the base, I found everything he left there. Various weapons from various countries. By various I mean VARIOUS. There was at least a set of weapon from almost every country. The first room I found was what looked like the libraby. It also acted as a storage room for the weapons. Inside I found scrolls on various jutsus. That includes secret techniques from various clans. And man oh man, there were a lot of them, which I was surprised to see. Because I couldn't access that part of his memories and didn't know about them. Thus I ended up being surprised.

There are some parts of his memories that I can't enter. But I'll be able to after sometime.

The reason he has all those family secrets because he didn't only gather weapons. He also gathered thrown away scrolls from trash. He learned to read and write from those scrolls. Sometimes he would gather thrown away scrolls from various clans. Sometimes he would go to that part of the town where all the trash are gathered. He would search through the trash and find anything that suited him and brought them with him to the base. No one really minded him taking anything from the trash.

You may ask why were there family secrets from various families. That's because once a clan improved a technique, they would immediately get rid of the old one. Now, how they got rid of those varied from clan to clan. The Hyuga and the Uchiha clan would throw them into the trash thinking that no one dare to touch them or no one would learn anything from because their techniques were far too "difficult" from normal ninja to learn. The Nara and Aburame family would get rid of them them by gathering them in one place and burning them.

"That" Naruto gathered scrolls from the in a different way. He would sneak into their compounds and quickly copied the scrolls and leave before they could even notice.

I decided to check those scrolls. All of them were categorized based on clan, style, element, danger level and alphabet. First, I checked Hyuga clan's scrolls. After checking all the And idea formed in my head. I decided to create an Anti-Hyuga style which would completely counter the Hyuga style. I had the raw materials(the scrolls), the resources and insurance(shadow clone jutsu), a place to experiment and develop it(the secret base). So, what was stopping me from creating it. After reading them I put them back in place.

Next, I checked the Uchiha clan secrets. I didn't find anything good about their **sharingan**. Only a little bit of information. But I had already made the decision to make a counter for the sharingan. I would have to work with what I have. I put them back in place after reading them.

Then I checked the Nara clan's scrolls. There was only one scroll about their jutsu and some scrolls about battle tactics. They made everything difficult to understand. But I was able get a clear idea about the jutsu. It was shikamaru's older version of **shadow possession ****jutsu**. The only problem was that it took more chakra than the latest version. The battle tactics were very hard to understand. Hmm... looks like I'll need to spend a lot of time on these. After reading them I put them back.

Soon, I skimmed through rest of the scrolls. By the time I was finished I noticed that it was night time already. So, I went to the kitchen and prepared some instant ramen for my dinner. "He" prepared this base in a way so he can spend weeks here without going out for food.

While eating my dinner I looked around the rest of the base. There was a practice area. This was where you practiced throwing weapons, taijutsu, and the destructive ninjutstu. I found a study room. This was where "Naruto" practiced his fuinjutsu(sealing techniques). A storage room where he stored various necessities. A big enough bed room with a dresser, a twin bed, a big mirror, a night lamp. They all belonged Orochimaru. After disarming all the traps in them, "Naruto" started to use them. After checking the bed, there was a small stock of weapons and scrolls behind it where you can easily reach them.

There was a bathroom with shower and attached toilet.

There was also a big empty room in the back of the base. "Naruto" intended to move the library there, but never had the time to do it. So, I'll be doing it pretty soon.

After I was done with my dinner, I went to the practice area to practiced my chakra control. While practicing, I noticed that controlling my chakra flow much smoother then ever before. "_Is it because I'm using 'his' body?" _I thought. But quickly dismissed it thinking we both have the same body even though we've had different experiences.

Then I noticed something else. My reiatsu(spirit energy, energy/power from the soul) was unusually high. It was double the amount it should have been. That unusually high amount was giving me hard time controlling my chakra. But with time and patience I was able to control it as well.

The thought about my double amount of reiatsu kept nagging me in my mind. But pushed it away thinking I could think about it later.

So, after a few hours of practice and a lot of tears and bruises(from climbing the walls and falling) I got my old chakra control back. Actually It was even better than before. With this I might just be able to use the same super-human strength Tsunade has and Sakura will have in the future. Not that sakura is weak right now. Even now in the past her punches hurt.

By the time I was done with my training, it was time for bed. I went to bed after a quick shower. The bed was surprisingly quite comfy. While lying in bed I kept thinking about this base. This will be my base of operations. Everything will start from here. With that thought in mind and a plan for tomorrow, I fell asleep. Thus bringing down the curtains on my first day of me preparing some of the things I planned.


	5. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER 2**

**SOMEWHERE IN THE SEAL**

**NARUTO'S P.O.V**

I woke up in a dark place filled with water. The water felt like they were dirty. I was lying in that water. I stood up and looked around. Immediately recognizing the place as my mind, I started walking towards where Kurama was sealed in. After walking for a few minutes, a couple corridors and hallways, I made it to where Kurama was. When I looked at the place where she was sitting, I flinched a bit after seeing her as I was still used to seeing Kurama as a guy, not a girl. Soon, I came to a stop in front of the cage. I looked at her and asked,"why did you call me here?"

She said," Have you recovered your memories about your fight with me?"

Seriously, I was nowhere near being used to her voice. I mean I'm here, I somehow expecting to meet the damn furball, the "evil" nine-tailed fox Kurama. Instead i meet this beautiful lady who is supposed to that nine-tailed fox Kurama. In other words surprised and slightly flustered.

Not letting it show in my voice, I said," No, not yet."

She looked disappointed and said,"hmm, I see" After staying silent for a couple seconds, she asked again in a slightly soft tone,"How are you doing Naruto?"

Clearly surprised and slightly suspicious, I quickly asked,"what do you you mean?"

"I'm asking how is life going for you Naruto. Are you still hurt after the... last incident?"

"Since when did you start caring about my well-being? I think this the second we've met and you're acting like we've friends for long time" I asked with a calm voice a raised eye-brow.

"In a sense, we are long-time friends" she said while chuckling a bit.

"How?" I asked while furrowing my eye-brows.

Then she took on a tone that reminded me of the times when Iruka sensei was teaching us about text book facts and said," you see naruto, I've been with you since you were born because I was sealed inside you on your very first birthday."

"that much I already know" I said with a dead-pan voice.

She looked irritated about the fact I interrupted her. Which got me a bit surprised. Because she wasn't surprised about me knowing about her being locked up inside. I decided to investigate it. So, I listened to her next words carefully.

"Listen carefully naruto, I've been inside you ever since you were born. I saw everything you saw through you eyes, I heard everything through your ears. I could see all your memories. I saw those moments when you were enjoying your favourite "ramen", I saw how you were ignored by almost everyone, hated by almost everyone. I saw how you were beaten, tortured, almost killed every time. I heard your every thoughts, your every single wish, your every single desires. I was there every time when you forced yourself to not cry. I was there when you stood up with fresh new determination after being pushed down by everyone. I was there when you wanted to make everyone like you, love you, at the very least make them notice you. I was there when you planned your pranks in order to gain at least some kind of attention. I was there when you were being chased during those "Annual Demon Hunts"(I noticed a bit of anger in her voice at this part but brushed it off as my imagination) and I was there when you were almost...killed last time( I flinched a bit here remembering how hard "he" had it). So, I know everything about you. I know you would be mentally very hurt right now. So tell me Naruto, are you hurt?", she said all these with a controlled voice. at least tried to.

I noticed some restrained emotions in her voice. I couldn't tell what they were but I could certainly tell they weren't bad.

I also became quite suspicious at this part. If she could hear my thoughts then why was she asking me this. So, I said to her," you're the on who can hear my thoughts, you tell me."

She simply sighed dejectedly after hearing me. Then she said," I wish I could naruto, but I can't. you see After you won the battle against me in your mind and the seal was changed I was blocked from your sight, hearing, thoughts and memories. So, for once, I don't know naruto how you are feeling."

This explains a lot of things.

First of all, she never talked about my "future" because I probably gained my memories AFTER whatever "battle" she had against me in my mind. So, she doesn't know of them.

Second, She can't hear my thoughts. So, she doesn't know about my plans. So, I don't have to be afraid of her finding out about my memories of the future.

Third, based on what she said, she might just have a soft spot for me in her heart(if she has one that is).

She went out of her way to be nice to me even though she could have just ignored about my condition completely. She might not be as bad as the Kurama I know, so I'll be a bit nice to her. But I'll still have to be careful though.

With that, I said with a soft tone while forming a small smile," Don't worry, I'll live."

She was quite taken back by my sudden change of attitude, but smiled nonetheless. She said,"good" while smiling a bit and nodding a few times.

I said," well then, it's about time I left. So, we'll meet next time."

I was just about to leave this place when she suddenly said,"Naruto wait" which stopped me in my tracks completely.

I turned around and looked at her. "what is it?", I asked.

She looked down for a bit, then she looked at me with determination and said," you see Naruto, since I am all alone here and I'm cut off from all your senses and memories, can you...arrange something so that I can...at least see what you are seeing." She was rubbing her left index finger with her right hand while saying that.

I thought about it for a moment. Then I almost face palmed. Not because I didn't provide her with any thing while she was down here all alone. Because this place is my mind. I can literally do anything here if I want. I hate this dark look in my mind has right now. So, why didn't I think of changing it if I hate it so much?

Then I thought about her predicament and immediately felt bad about it. Before she had something to look forward to. Now, after the battle, she was completely in the dark, literally and figuratively.

So, I decided to fix this place as well as be nice to her. First I gave her connection to all my five senses. So, now she can feel whatever I physically feel. I also made it so that she can talk to me me in my mind without pulling me in my mind. Then I turned this whole place into a huge lush green forest with a clearing and a lake. I made the cage disappear, but it wasn't completely gone. It was just much much bigger. At one corner of clearing the I made a small hut where I can access "his" memories anytime I want and no one else would be able to enter it. In the other corner I made a small orange orb appear.

Then I told her," you see that small orb over there" while pointing at the orb "all you have to touch that orb and imagine the kind of house you want. It will immediately turn into the kind of house you want. In the house you can eat any kind of food you want."

Then I looked at her and saw that she was looking at me funny with slight disbelief etched across her face.

Then she almost whispered,"why?"

I nearly missed it. Then I asked her," what do you mean why?"

"I mean why are you doing all this? You gave me access to all your five senses, gave me such a beautiful space and even a house which I can design in any way I want, which is clearly much more than I asked for. I am the reason such a harsh life. You should be angry at me, you should hate me. Instead you are being nice to me. Are you messing with me in any way?" she said all this with a slightly angry tone.

Understanding why she was angry at me, I said with a calm voice," No, not really."

"Then why?" she asked.

"It's because you're my friend." She became wide-eyed and looked COMPLETELY surprised. wow, this was the first time I got such a reaction from her. I almost laughed at her reaction, but stopped myself just in time. Then I continued," You're the one who said you were my long-time friend. Or, was it just a lie?"

She quickly said," No. No, it wasn't."

"Then that's all the reason I need."

Actually, that wasn't the biggest reason I did all this. Sure I wanted to be friends with her, Have very good relation with her. But that wasn't the main reason. The main reason was that she was much nicer when compared to "that" Kurama. Sure, she may be evil, but she was still better than "that" damned furball.

Anyway, right now I could tell that she was confused at the moment by my actions and I certainly did not want to deal with that. So, I said my goodbyes and quickly left the place.

**THE OUTSIDE WORLD**

**The Next Day**

I woke up in the same that I fell asleep in last night, which was in my secret base.I looked at alarm clock near the bed. It read 4:10 in the morning. Looks like the sun hasn't risen yet. Normally I wouldn't be able wake up like this. But The war completely changed my habits. Anyway, I yawn and get out of bed and go to the bathroom to do my morning rituals. After that prepare some Instant ramen from breakfast. by the time I was done with breakfast, It was already 4:50. SO, I went to the Practice are to train.

First, I tried creating 12 shadow clones. I had my doubts about the shadow clones because I still haven't practiced this jutsu after gaining the new chakra control. But quickly dispelled those thoughts because this particular jutsu doesn't need much chakra control. Just high amounts of chakra is everything you need.

I created a dozen of shadow clones and checked them carefully. I was satisfied with the results as there was nothing wrong with them and the total chakra was evenly distributed among us(including me). So, I set them to work.

I told the first pair of clones to practice their basic taijutsu. They immediately went to one corner of the practice room to try out their most basic hand-to-hand combat techniques against each other.

Then I told the second pair to practice their chakra control. They immediately started climbing the walls of the room. Even though I got my chakra control back I shouldn't stop practicing it everyday.

I told the third pair to practice their throwing skills. They started doing just that after getting some small weapons from the library/weapon storage. "hmm, I should move the weapon storage to this room." I thought.

Then I called the fourth pair and told them to practice all the jutsu I know. I seriously hope that they get the message and only practice basic jutsus like **transformation jutsu, clone jutsu and the substitution jutsu **while I'm here and start practicing the real ones AFTER I leave this room.

I'm not sure whether they got my message or not, but they started with the basic ones which is good, maybe.

I told the fifth pair to read about a special medicine that was in one of the scrolls he gathered, find the necessary ingredients, prepare it and secretly deliver it to my apartment.

Then I called the last remaining pair, the sixth pair. I gave them some of my own chakra and told them to proceed with the "**The Switch**" and the "**The Hibernation**".

I waited for a few moments for Kurama to comment on my suspicious acts. Since she didn't say anything then that means either she was asleep or she chose not to say anything.

After giving every clone their orders, I went to the library in order to avoid seeing my clones using my more advanced which in turn will be seen by her... hey wait. I stopped immediately and started thinking, She's already seen one my advanced jutsus, The shadow clone jutsu. Since she's been with me my whole life then she should know that I wasn't supposed to know that jutsu or, if I did know, then why I did not ever use it. Then why didn't she say anything about it? That got me a little worried.

Only three possibilities come to my mind.

One, She's just watching and thinking right now.

Two, She simply doesn't care enough ask me about it.

Three, She's asleep at the moment.

I really hope it's one of the latter two.

Even if she ever asks me about it, I'll just make up some excuses. No worries.

Shaking my head to dispel all the unnecessary thoughts I made my way to the library. Normally I would've come here to read but today, I'm not here to do that. I'm just here to work out a little.

Reason? I didn't want her to see my advanced jutsus. I won't be showing her any of my secrets until I trust her completely and right now, I don't trust her enough. Sure she's been nice to me and all that. But she's the nine-tailed fox Kurama, the true incarnation of evil. She may not be as evil as the Kurama I knew, but she's still evil. So, I'll have to be careful around her.

Now, getting back to work. I decided to 300 push-ups while doing a hand stand, 300 sit-ups and 300 crunches. Today I decided to go easy because this the first time I was working with this body.

The reason I took the physically demanding exercises myself because shadow clones don't affect the changes in your body, only the mind. For example: you'll benefit from your clone reading a book or practicing jutsu or controlling chakra. But you won't benefit from your clone physically working out. No matter what kind of workout they do, it won't bring any change to your body. That's why I take the physically demanding exercises.

After I was done, I was surprised to see that I only had light soreness all over my body. So that means "he" has been working out. Not as much as me, but he was definitely working out.

Thinking about him reminded me of an issue which has been nagging for quite a while now. Why can't I access some of his memories even though I basically own all his memories. The one I could easily access were those that were of his daily life. And the ones I had trouble with accessing were those he would avoid telling. The difficulty kept rising as the secrets became more darker and deeper. I really had a lot of trouble entering those memories.

That got me thinking about this base. This was one of his greater secrets, if not, the greatest secrets. Then why was I able to find out about it?

Of course there were some difficult memories that I gained access to after seeing or hearing something related to those memories.

So either I would be getting those memories slowly as my mind is still not familiar with those memories. If that was true then only time will allow me access to those memories.

Or, something was preventing me from entering me. Something different entirely. Not like my mind simply being unfamiliar with new memories. More like... who or **what **is blocking those memories. I thought about this for quite a while.

Even after thinking about this for a long time I didn't get anywhere near any kind of conclusion and my head was starting to hurt. Deciding to stop with this, I looked at the time. I only had an hour left before class started. I needed to get back home as soon as possible.

Just before leaving the base I thought for a moment about dispelling the clones, but decided against it as they will automatically dispell once they ran out of chakra.

With that I quickly got out of the base, hid the entrance, ran to the secret entrance leading to my apartment and used it to enter my home. Once I was in, I was took a quick shower after letting the ramen prepare. After shower I opened the fridge to find some side dish to go with the main dish. There were some meat and vegetables in the fridge. It seems "he" learned the necessity of vegetables much earlier than me. Even though I eat vegetables now, I learned their importance much much later in life. And judging by the amount that was in the fridge, I'd say he wasn't a fan of vegetables just like, but ate it nonetheless.

So, I took some vegetables, added them raw to the ramen as I didn't have much time left, quickly ate them and made my way to class after taking the necessary things. After getting out of the apartment the "normal way", I spread my senses a bit and found out that there were a few Jonin level shinobi following me. I didn't feel any ill intention from them. It seems Gramps still cared a lot about me as he sent some ANBU members to follow me and keep me safe. After the last "Demon Hunt" he was quite worried about me.

With a stupid grin on my face, I started running towards class.

When I reached the class, I noticed that I only had a few minutes before class started and everyone was there. I made my way to my seat which was just behind Hinata's.

So, I stopped in front of her said Hinata and greeted her with all the friendliness I could muster up and a grin, hoping that she wouldn't pass out immediately.

Hearing my greeting she was completely stunned and just kept looking. A deep shade of red made it's way toward her face and it was becoming darker. Ooops, I might have over done it a bit as there was something coming out of her. It was... steam, i think. I was getting ready to catch her when she did something that got me completely surprised. She suddenly changed her facial expression. Now **that** got my total attention. She then looked into my eyes... or at least tried to as she was too embarrassed to look me in the eye. Out of corner of my eyes I noticed Kiba giving me a dirty look saying while something to me but at the moment I was too focused on her. Anyway, she looked just below my eyes and said,"H-He-l-llo, N-N-Na-Naruto-kun". Wow, just wow. The ever shy and embarrassed Hinata Hyuga is changing. That certainly got me expecting something good about her. She said all that without passing out mid-sen... and she passed out. Hmm.. Looks like I let my hopes up too high. But still, seeing her make the attempt was good enough on its own.

I decided to check on her as I was getting slightly worried about her and it was something my "facade" would do as the "facade" wouldn't understand what was going on.

"Hey Hinata-chan, are you alright?" I asked her while nudging her slowly. Kiba was about about jump on me for even daring to touch his precious "mate-to-be". But before he could do anything like that, the bell rang. So, he gave up the idea of roughing me up and went back to sitting in his seat, but didn't give up glaring at me. I looked at Hinata, who was still passed out and decided to leave it to the teachers as I shouldn't involve myself more than necessary for now. So, I took my seat waited for the class to start. Soon the teacher came noticed the unconscious Hinata, shook her awake and began his lectures.

Today's lecture was about various hand-seals and their meanings.I wasn't really interested in them as I already knew them. After listening to the lectures for 10 minutes I started to become interested in the lecture, not because the lecture was interesting. In fact it was getting utterly boring. I was interested in the lecture because a plan was forming in my mind. When he said,"with the right combination of hand-seals you can make any jutsu" that got me thinking as long as you have clear idea of what kind of jutsu you want to make and the meaning and purpose of the hand-seals, you can make almost any jutsu you want. So, I can make my own jutsus. That seemed like a nice idea and all, but it'll have to wait because my body isn't at peak condition right now and I don't have sufficient knowledge about the hand-seals and jutsu formation.

With that kind of heavy thinking I didn't notice that hinata kept glancing at me from time to time and ignored the whole lecture. So, by the end of the lecture, the teacher asked me something and I couldn't answer him. Then he started nagging me about not being attentive enough. That got almost everyone snickering. Some even said things like, "nice one dobe", "as expected of the dead-last". Normally I would be quite pissed off about it but right now I'm pleased with their reaction. This is exact reaction I needed. Even though I was pleased, I was a bit unhappy about them calling me names.

I noticed that Hinata was giving me a look of sympathy, something I expected her to do. I looked around with my left pinky finger in my ear, clearly acting annoyed at the teacher lecturing me. That's when I noticed something wrong. That was Ino.

Normally, the way Ino acted, she was very close to the definition of what you would call a "BITCH". With that you would expect her to laugh at my failure while clutching her stomach as if I was her greatest entertainment.

But, that wasn't what she was doing at the moment. Right now her laugh seemed a bit forceful. I didn't think much about it.

Anyway, soon the teacher got tired of the yelling and the bell rang signalling the end of the class. Next is projectile throwing exercise.

I half-shouted like an idiot who was all pumped up," yooosh, I'm gonna show off my new skills(yeah right)" and ran to the location where the exercise was taking place.

Needless to say that I did my best there, at least that's what it looked like. The end results were:

None of the projectile hit anywhere near the dead-center.

About half of them didn't even hit the target board.

And some of them almost hit the teacher. That jump started the yelling machine again.

Again, the whole class snickered and called me various names, Hinata gave me a sympathetic look. And surprisingly, again, Ino gave me that same strange laugh. I'll need investigate that.

After that we went back to class. Then came the lunch break. I quietly made my way to the swing and sat on it. I waited for two full minutes before looking around and found Hinata hiding behind the same tree. I could only raise and eyebrow at that. "_Why the same tree?"_ I thought. Whatever. It doens't really matter.

Just like yesterday, I smiled and waved at her. And just like yesterday, she hid behind the tree. This time, instead of hiding behind the tree immediately, she looked at me for a few seconds and then she hid behind the tree. Then she came back out after a minute which was only half of yesterday's time. I smiled and waved at her, she hid behind the tree and came out again with the same amount of time.

"_hmm, looks like she's improving faster than what I expected"_ I thought.

Then continued with this game of "hide and hide again" throughout the whole lunch break until there was only 5 minutes left of the lunch break. I quickly made my way to the cafeteria, ate my lunch quickly to which they demanded triple amount of normal price. Normally, I would've flipped at this, but this was the normal for him. So, I paid the money quietly and went back to class just in time for math and writing practice. This will be a long day.

When the class ended, I got out of the building and was suddenly hit with rush of memory and a bit of headache. It seems the clones were done with the taijutsu practice, throwing practice, and chakra control and the medicine was ready at my house.

The fourth pair didn't finish their jutsu practice because they ran out of chakra , but they got the Rasengan down.

Normally this would've been a time for me mess around, pulling pranks or something like that. But today I'm just gonna visit the old man Teuchi. I haven't met him and Ayame for a while now. I wonder how they're doing right now. Man, I haven't had my favorite ramen made by old man teuchi lately. I completely forgot about it in all this "rewind" fiasco.

With that in mind I walked to one of my usual hangouts. On the way I met with the usual. While walking down the road people gave me usual glares filled with love, they called me by the various nick names made from all their, some avoided me because they were too shy to get anywhere near. Sometimes people would stop their children from going anywhere me lest they end up "stealing".Ahh... I can definitely feel the love oozing out of their skin. Yup, this is definitely one of the usual days(at least for "him" anyway)

Soon, I caught sight of old man teuchi's smiling face standing behind the counter. He was serving a customer right now. I don't want to scare away the customers. So, I waited in a corner. After waiting for five minutes, the customer left. After that I quickly took a seat. The old man smiled at me and said," Oh hello there Naruto, sorry about making you wait." Ah, it seems he noticed that I was waiting in a corner.

So, I answered him with a goofie grin plastered all over my face," No problem old man. Just give me the usual"

"Sure thing Naruto, just give a few minutes." with that he went to the back of the store.

Normally I would be asking for at least two or three types of ramen all at once. But I decided to go with the usual, "his" usual that is. I could certainly find out by checking "his" memories, but decided against it. I wanted see for my self what the other me usually has for ramen.

After old man Teuchi left, Ayame came out of the store. She greeted me with a smile. I also did the same. That smile always gave me peace. You don't know how many times her smile and the old man's ramen saved me from my depression because it always gave me a "homey" or family-like feeling.

Suddenly, few more images of her smiles appeared in my mind and... some emotions were attached to them. A bit giddy, slightly nervous and some happiness.

Ahhh... it seems "he" liked her a bit. He certainly took a liking to the right person. Then why did he chase after sakura?

So, I decided to check "his" memories. I looked down and closed my eyes. I entered "his" memories. I tried to find the right memory. It should be related to sakura. Here's one asking her out and getting rejected, here's one asking her out and getting rejected and here's one asking her out and getting punched in the face. Hmm... that's a lot of rejection from the same person. Not that I'm complaining since I used to do the same. Ahh.. it seems I found the right one. How do I know? it just feels like the right one feeling. So, I entered it with quite a bit of difficulty since he wanted to keep it a secret.

After entering I found that he chased her because she was respected quite a lot because she was the smartest girl in the class and had the potential to be the smartest kunoichi. So, "he" thought if she liked him then people would also respect him. Hmm... that was smart of him but he chose the wrong target.

"..ruto?"

I was suddenly brought out "his" "soul searching" by Ayame's voice.

"Naruto, is everything all right?" She asked.

It seems she became worried when she saw me suddenly becoming quiet. I should ease her worries.

"Nothing really, I was just thinking how beautiful your smiles were" I said without thinking.

Ooops, I shouldn't have said that. I'm feeling slightly flustered, scared and... anxious for a moment and then those feelings suddenly went away. Why did I suddenly feel like that right now?

I then noticed that Ayame had a barely noticable blush on her face. Seeing that I smirked in my mind and thought,"_my oh my Ayame-chan, blushing at a childs compliment I see. Looks like you have potential to be a shotacon"_

Then she giggled a bit while covering her face with her left hand and "playfully" hit me on the side of my head.

OUCH. That hurt a lot. This is child abuse.

"oh Naruto, you play-boy, complimenting me like that won't get anywhere like that." hearing that, I felt a bit of disappointed. why did I just feel that? I decided to ignore it.

"_Yeah, and you shouldn't get flustered from a child's compliment either" _I thought while giving her a dead-pan look and rubbing my head.

"Anyway Naruto, I've gotta go back and help dad. It was nice to see you again." she said before going to the back of the store.

"yeah, same here, Ayame-chan" I replied to her.

Once she was gone I went back to thinking why did I suddenly feel scared and flustered from complimenting her.

Then I noticed that those feelings were from "his" memories. It seems slowly his memories are melding into mine and serving as my own memories.

"He" was suddenly scared that she would find about "his" feelings and become ashamed of him. Anxious because "he" had a small expectation that she would accept his feelings. Sorry buddy, I'm willing to bet she already knows. You can blame a woman's intuition for it and she'll be infatuated with Kakashi in a couple years. So, I pity you a bit.

After I was done with my thinking, old man teuchi came back with 15 bowls of "his" "usual" ramen.

Looks like "he" usually has the same type of ramen as me. Miso ramen with beef and egg.

Soon I was done with the food, paid teuchi for the food and left the store. I quickly went back to my apartment and took a relaxing shower.

Once I came out of the shower someone was knocking on the door. Not expecting any body, I put my right hand in my right pocket where I always keep an emergency kunai.

I carefully opened the door while being ready to be attacked anytime.

"Hey Naruto, How have you been?"

Upon seeing the person in front of the door, I almost grimaced. Almost.


	6. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER 3**

**IN NARUTO'S SECRET BASE**

**NARUTO'S P.O.V**

Right now, I am in the room at the back of the base. I've been in this room throughout half the night. I originally planned for this room to be used as the library. But right now, I have to cancel that plan. You see, right now I'm kneeling in front of a ritual circle which was made of various seals. My hands are on the circle and I'm looking at a block of ice which was pretty big. There was a person in that block of ice. I was trying to focus on the person block of ice when I was suddenly called by someone from my side.

"Hey boss, how long till it's over? I'm almost out of chakra and I'm getting tired." One of my clones said who was to my right, in the same position as me.

"You know as well as I do. We're almost done. So, don't loose focus now or the whole thing will fail." I said.

Right now, There were a total number of 3 persons on three sides of the circle. Kneeling and hands on the circle. 2 of them were my clones and one was the real me.

I am trying to seal a person in a block of ice. This seal is incomplete and can hold the person inside it for less than two years before it needs to be remade. If I don't remake the seal, the seal won't break, that's for sure(As, the ice somehow never melts). But the person inside it will.

This type of seal holds it's target in a block of ice for as long as the seal isn't broken. Normally during that time nothing happens to the person sealed inside it. The person inside it doesn't need to eat, drink or breath. He/she doesn't need to breath. He/she doesn't even age. It's almost as if time has stopped for everything inside it. But, that's not the case for the seal I made.

You see, the seal I made is a bit incomplete. I don't know the complete version of it. During "my" time I was only able to take a glance at how to make an incomplete version of it as I couldn't get my hands on the complete one.

This seal is incomplete because it doesn't seal the person inside it completely. The person inside it slowly loses their chakra/life force. If it was the complete version of it, then this wouldn't happen.

By constantly losing his/her chakra, he/she slowly moves closer towards death. Once they lose all their chakra, he/she will die. But the body will remain intact in the ice(provided that someone doesn't try to destroy the seal and the body).

Now for a Jounin level shinobi, he/she will survive one year at best. But I've pumped as much chakra as possible into the "target" without causing any harm to the body. So, this person will last almost 2 years at the very least.

Now, the seal looks almost complete. The target was almost completely covered in ice except for the head. With one final push of my chakra, I completed the seal and the target was completely locked inside a large block of ice. The ice was transparent but it was a bit difficult to see the person inside it. In order to recognize the person inside it, you have to focus a little.

Once the seal was complete, the clones dispelled immediately as they ran out of chakra. If they ran out of chakra just a bit earlier, then I would have been in a lot of trouble.

You see, normally this type of seal needs only one type of person to perform it. But I didn't have much confidence in myself and performing the seal without any mistake was necessary as I **really **wanted to keep the person inside it **alive**.

So, I used some shadow clones to keep the seal stable while I complete the whole process.

As I was leaving the room, the exhaustion and the lack of sleep for working throughout half the night caught up to me. I stumbled and almost fell asleep then and there but forcefully kept myself awake. Soon, I reached the door and sat down against the wall beside it. Right now I was facing the block of ice. I looked up to see the person sealed inside the block of ice.

She is a few feet above the ground inside the ice. She has slightly shiny long raven coloured hair flowing down to her back. Her face looks frozen(not the one because of cold) as if all the time around her has stopped, as if she was in a peaceful slumber. The scar in her palm is barely noticable. Because that's where I drew blood from. She will soon become one of the two last remaining Uchihas in Konoha. She is Mikoto Uchiha.

**FLASHBACK**

**NARUTO'S APARTMENT  
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**_I almost grimaced from seeing the person in front of the door. Right now standing in front of me is Mikoto Uchiha, who isn't supposed to be here as tomorrow is one of the days for her regular visits. So, this scared me quite a bit as it may throw a monkey wrench in my plans. Because I wanted her to come, but a bit later if possible._**

**_**_Mikoto came inside my apartment as I closed the door behind her._**_**

**_**_She had some groceries in her hands. No doubt she is here to cook for me as usual._**_****_**_She then moved towards the kitchen and began preparing dinner._**_**

**_"Hello Naruto-kun, how was your day today?" she asked while making food for both of us._**

**_"It was great" I said. Then I gave her a description of what I did today._**

**_That's when she did something funny. She went wide-eyed for a bit, then she giggled while gently ruffling my hair._**

**_"My my Naruto-kun, it seems you are finally starting to notice the girl." she said while smiling_**

**_That was confusing. Now why would she say that? She is saying that I'm finally taking notice of some girl. Usually I or in this case, 'he' usually payed attention to only sakura. So, which girl would that be..._**

**_Ahhh, yes. She must be talking about my game with Hinata. It seems she is thinking along the lines of me thinking of asking Hinata out._**

**_Well, it seems she has no idea about what I'm planning to do to Hinata as well as the whole Hyuga clan. **_She's surprised just from me taking notice of her. Wait till she sees what I have in store for the Hyuuga heiress. I would love to see the expression on her face when she learns of it. Even more so after I'm done with the whole clan. Hmm... maybe I should get a camera for the sake of that moment. Anyway, I stop my thought train and decided to answer her in a 'Naruto' like fashion._**_**

**_"you know it's not like that Mikoto-chan, Sakura is the only one I'll ever be interested in" I said while chuckling and rubbing the back of my head._**

**_Her smile then turned into a frown. Hmm, that doesn't look good on a beautiful woman like her._**

**_"Naruto, you should really stop chasing that Haruno girl. I've told you the same thing many times in the past. Honestly, I don't know what you see in her.", She says in a half-scolding tone and ends with a huff. It seems she's done this many times in the past, well, that much is obvious. Looks like she's pretty disappointed in me for not following her advise. I can only smile sheepishly at her in response.  
><em>**

**_Seeing this she just sighs and goes back to her cooking. I took a seat on the table and watch her and watch her work her magic. I watch her, slightly mesmerized at the scene in front of me. Right now, I'm feeling a bit of familiarity, quite happy and... warm. I've never really had anyone do anything for me, much less cook for me in my own house. Sure Ayame-chan, Teuchi-san and Iruka-sensei helped me in many ways around this age. Heck, they even cooked for me, with the exception Iruka-sensei. I don't have anything against him but he could never really cook much besides instant food.  
><em>**

**_But even then, Ayame and Teuchi never really came to my house to cook for me. So, even though I'm not the 'Naruto' Mikoto thinks I am, even though 'I' never really knew her personally, I'm still gonna enjoy and treasure everything given to me by her._**

**_**_After that she finished cooking and served the dinner while I prepared the table._**_**

**_She didn't cook ramen, but I couldn't care less. She was cooking something for me because she wanted to and it's edible. So, who am I to complain about that?_**

**_We then ate our dinner while chatting. We had quite a fun time while chatting about whatever topic came up. It seems 'he' has done this many times because I'm feeling that sense of familiarity again. I don't think he knows how lucky he is to have someone like her caring for 'him'. I know about the beatings he received are far worse than mine. In fact, my life was heaven compared to 'his'. But I still can't help but envy him a bit. He had something like a family, a mother figure while I didn't. And I'm going to enjoy it while I can. Soon, the conversation tool bad turn. _**

**_It seems that she found out about me being in the hospital just today. So, she came to visit me before the scheduled day._****_It's not that she always followed a strict routine about which days to visit 'me'. She tries to visit me outside of the routine whenever she has free time. But that rarely happens. Though I'm not mad that she didn't visit in the hospital, I'm happyshe even visited me at all._**

**_Throughout the dinner we chatted about the usual(at least usual for her and 'him' anyway). Like, what has happened the past few days, whether anything new has happened recently, her family_** **situation**(which I had to work a bit to get it out of her), _**Itachi , Sauske, Her husband being busy with something for a long long**_** time(**meaning he hasn't been paying much attention to her for a while_**), my life, villagers not liking me**_** much(**excluding the part about them chasing me, beating me, cheating me with the price etc. etc._**) things like that.**_

_**Soon, were done and we started washing the plates, put them back in place and it was time for her to leave.**_

_**While making her way out of the apartment she was saying,"well Naruto, it's time to leave. I wish I could stay here longer but I have a clan meeting I have to attend even if I don't want to. There will be discussion about deciding something very big. Even Itachi, who has been acting strange and avoiding us, has to attend that meeting." she finishes with a sigh, indicating her dissatisfaction towards the situation. It seems this has been bothering her for a while. Whatever she was feeling, I couldn't really focus on it.**_

_**Because that's when the strangest things started to happen. First a shiver ran down my spine. Then I started noticing various changes in my sorrounding. The changes were first slow and subtle, but soon they started to fast and noticeable. First, Mikoto started to slow down. Her voice became thicker and less clear. She started to speak slower and slower. Her voice becoming thicker and thicker. The world around me was slowly starting to become consumed by darkness, from the farthest reaches of my vision to the center of my vision, where Mikoto is standing. I could feel my own heart-beat rising quickly and steadily. In fact my heart started beating so loudly that I could hear my own heart beating without even trying. I could only watch all these happening without even moving a single muscle, I couldn't blink, not even breathe.**_

_**Soon, everything was consumed by darkness except Mikoto. But she won't be safe for long as she is slowly being consumed by the darkness.**_

_**When the darkness started appearing, it felt like something was creeping towards me, something very cold and disgusting. When the darkness covered almost everything, I felt like drowning. All my senses became numb except my sight and hearing. Even then the sounds I could hear were mostly dull and unclear.**_

_**As the darkness slowly covered Mikoto, I could only watch. I couldn't even think properly. Soon, the darkness completely covered Mikoto and that's when the something happened which completely contradicted the current situation.**_

_**A huge burst of light came from Mikoto and the scene changed. I was standing somewhere in the village. It was mid-day as the sun was just reaching it's highest point. There were some clouds in the sky. In front of me, some distance away, a lot of people were gathered. Some of them were ninjas. All of them were gathered in front of a clan compound which was quite large. I recognized that house immediately. That was the Uchiha clan compound. I recognized the place immediately because I was brought to that place to be 'Disciplined' after my pranks, at least while they lived anyway. I used to love seeing Fugaku Uchiha blowing a gasket everytime I did a prank. I liked annoying people who acted high and mighty. And Fugaku took that to a whole new level. So, I really liked annoying him all the time. Watching him blowing a gasket every time really made my day.**_

_**A sudden change in the crowd brought me out of my musing. The crowd was parting creating a pathway. That's when I started to notice something. At first I didn't notice because of sudden and huge change in scenery. But now I'm feeling it very clearly. I'm getting a distinct feeling of dread. It was weak in the beginning. But seeing the crowd part, the feeling has become very strong.**_

_**Through the pathway, medic-ninja were carrying what looked to be dead bodies covered with white sheets, in stretchers. Seeing those my fear reached a new level. I was looking at the intently and was trying to distinguish them, hoping the person I was looking wasn't among them. I watched each dead body pass by. As the numbers kept increasing, my fears kept rising. I was visibly shaking from the fear and anxiousness. Soon, my eyes were drawn to a single stretcher that came out just now. A hand was limply hanging from the side of the stretcher. I immediately recognized that hand. It was the same hand that caressed my cheeks and ruffled my hair many times. It belonged to her.**_

_**That finally broke the dam. Immediately lost all power in my joints and fell on my knees. Hot tears flowed down from my eyes and fell on the ground, I was crying, which was something something I haven't done in a long time. I was feeling sad, drowning in despair. My chest hurt a lot. It felt like I was going to be torn apart from the anguish. It was so much that, I couldn't even make a sound. I was silently crying the whole time.**_

_**Before I could even notice, I was back in my apartment. In front of was Mikoto. The darkness or should I say shadow, was slowly retreating to wherever it came from. Soon, everything was back to the way it was before this... this happened. Everything got it's color back. Mikoto was saying something while shaking her head and keeping her eyes closed. Yes, everything was back to normal. Everything except me.**_

_**I was breathing hard, my eyes were tearing up. I was shaking from what I've just seen. I was even starting to sweat a bit. "Just what did I see?" I quietly asked myself. I was standing near the Uchiha compound whereas I was supposed to be in my apartment. It was clearly during mid-day, based on what I've seen from that... that... vision as opposed to now as it is night. Was that vision just a hallucination? No, that's not possible. As far as I know, I don't have problems like that. My 'vision' clearly showed me of a different time. So, was it a vision of the past? No, that's unreasonable. No, because Mikoto is standing in front of me completely safe and sound and neither me nor him don't have any memories like that from where things like that can suddenly pop up. So, was it a vision of the future like that of Shion's? No, I don't have any powers like that. Or, do I? Maybe I just somehow unlocked this new power. What ever it is, I'm clearly shaken from what it showed me. It showed me Mikoto will probably die very soon.**_

_**I know. It sounds completely stupid and crazy. But I'll believe what I just saw, my gut feelings are telling me to believe it. I always believe my gut feeling because it always saved me. And the times I didn't, welll... I don't want to talk about them. I'll have to execute my plans ahead of schedule then.**_

_**I was soon brought out of my thinking by the sound of Mikoto's voice. By then I was back to normal. My breathing steady, eyes clear, sweating stopped. I then looked upto Mikoto to hear what she was saying to me.**_

_**"Ok, Naruto. It's time to leave. I've had quite a fun time with you. But it's time for me leave. Bye." She said to me with a gentle wave of her hand. She then turned to leave.**_

_**"Wait Mikoto-chan!" I desperately called out to her. I needed to stop her from leaving this apartment. If she left then my plans will completely fail.**_

_**She the stopped abruptly in her tracks. She then turned around and looked at me worriedly. She was a bit surprised and worried by the sound of my voice. She then gently asked,"What's wrong Naruto-kun?"**_

_**Okay, I managed to stop her. But what I'm gonna do now? I need to get her to stay in my apartment just for five minutes. Well, it's not that I don't have a plan, but it's a pretty simple plan. It'll have to do for now.**_

_**"Mikoto-chan, would you like to eat a cup of ramen with me?" I decided to go with a simple invitation to eating ramen. I know it's not exactly a genius or a Nara worthy plan, but it's the only one I got at the moment.**_

_**"Why Naruto-kun? Didn't we eat dinner just now?" She asked me curiously and slightly surprised. She must be taken aback by sensing my desperation only for it to turn out to be a simple request like that. I seriously don't want her to doubt anything. I hope all the time 'me' and her spent together and my childish appearance will block out any doubt that comes up.**_

_**"You see, Mikoto-chan, I really wanted to eat some ramen with you during dinner. Not that I'm complaining about what you cooked for me. They were really tasty. But I really wanted to eat some ramen with you."**_

_**HOOK**_

_**"I appreciate the compliment Naruto-kun, but we already ate dinner. And on top of that I have to attend the clan meeting. It's really important and I'm running out of time." she said trying to convince me. Yeah right, no way in hell I'm giving up here.**_

_**"But Mikoto-chan, it's only one cup" I said like I'm whining.**_

_**"Naruto, I'm sorry, but I really don't have enough time." She said. This time adding a bit more force.**_

_**"But, but..." I said desperately. Finally I admit defeat with a sigh while my head is down. It's time to pull out my game-breaker move.**_

_**I change my expression to something like all my hopes and dreams are broken and everything was taken from me. I form my mouth into the most saddest smile I could manage and make my eyes look like they're about to overflow from tears any moment. Then I looked her right in the eyes and said,"O-okay, I-I-I understand..." Normally children get angry and/or start pouting and that is what she will be expecting me to do. But I'm not exactly a 'child'. Then I continued in a near-broken, devoid of any happiness while still trying to be cheerful but failing voice, "It's just that, it's been a long while since the last time we spent any time together and I wanted to spend my birthday with you but I was in the hospital and you didn't come to visit me during this time so..." I trail off and pause for a few seconds. I know I maybe going a bit overboard here, but I decided to pull out all the stops here. I know she was very busy with her clan related business and that's why she couldn't visit me and missed my birthday. While it may sound shameful, I'm gonna capitalize on that and hit her hard, real hard.**_

_**LINE**_

_**"Okay Naruto, just one cup. But I'm leaving after that." She said in a defeated tone, it seems she finally gave up.**_

_**aaAAAAANNNNNDDDDD SINNNKEEEERRRRRR**_

_**Yes, yes, she finally accepted. YEAH. I'm pretty much dancing my victory dance in my mind.**_

_**"All right Mikoto-chan, just take a seat somewhere I'll get the ramen." I said in a cheery voice while running to the kitchen. I quickly went to heat up some water. After setting the water heat-up, I went to the cupboard got the ramen and the medicine out. I quickly added the medicine to the water and poured the water in the cups. I left them in the kitchen as I went to close all the curtains in my apartment. I know it may look a bit strange to others, but better safe than sorry. the I went back to the kitchen, got the cups and went to find Mikoto.  
><strong>_

_**Soon I found her sitting on my bed in the bedroom. I handed her one cup and sat down beside her with the other cup in my hand. We both started eating. Soon we were done eating. After taking care of the trash I led her to the door. At the door I made her bend down and kissed one of her cheeks. It turned quite amusing because she blushed and giggled a bit and brought her hand to her cheek just from that simple matter. Meh, whatever. Soon, it won't matter anymore. We then said our goodbyes and I opened the door for her to leave. She started turning towards the exit.**_

_**3**_

_**I started counting down. Because it should be almost finished with it's work by now. She was now facing the exit. I blinked, beginning to become excited for the result.**_

_**2**_

_**she took a single step towards the outside of the apartment. My eyes slowly rise and my breath starts to quicken in anticipation of what I was hoping to happen.**_

_**1**_

_**She took another step. I watch her slowly retreating back. Ready, for the desired result to happen at any moment.**_

_**0**_

_**And she stumbled a bit. She brought one hand to her forehead and a second later she fell on her back on the floor effectively passing out. I went to check her. I shook her for any kind of response. Seeing no response I couldn't help but smirk a bit. I succeeded in the first part of the plan. After checking if anyone saw this or not, I picked her up in bridal style and brought her back into the house. I made my way to the bedroom and put her on the bed.**_

_**I gave her a strong sleeping medicine. It had a weak smell and a bit of color. Any 'active' Jonin or higher level ninja would notice, 'active' being the keyword here. Mikoto has been inactive ever since she became pregnant with Itachi. So her senses should be pretty bad and her innate resistant should've become pretty weak by now. I was capitalizing on those. Plus I added the same medicine to my own ramen as well to avoid suspicion. I wasn't the least bit worried since my Uzumaki blood and kyuubi's chakra would protect me from something like this.**_

_**The medicine starts working immediately after entering the body. But how quickly it spreads, depends on the blood circulation. So, when she stood up after eating the instant ramen, that's when the medicine actually started spreading.**_

_**I don't actually have any experience in making medicine, but I once saw how powdered medicine like this was made. That's where I got the basic idea. I made the clones read up on the necessary ingredients and got them search for the items. They didn't have any problems finding the ingredients in the forest because I have experience from camping from Jiraiya.**_

_**Anyway, I don't have much time or, to be more accurate she doesn't have much time. The meeting will start soon and I don't anyone to become suspicious just because Mikoto's not at the meeting. So, first things first, time to get rid of the guards watching my apartment from the outside. I create two shadow clones. One of them Henged(transformed) into Mikoto. I told them to turn off the lights, get out of the apartment and go wherever they like together. Their job is to distract the ANBU outside long enough for me to get out of here with Mikoto.**_

_**Although both of them are clones and one of them is wearing a simple genjutsu, the ANBU team will never find about them. Because they were ordered to never interfere with me unless it becomes absolutely necessary. So, they're safe.**_

_**Just as they were ordered, they turned off the lights and got out of the apartments. Now I just have to wait for 10 minutes. But that 10 minutes of waiting turned out to be very troublesome because of my tenant.**_

_**"Nice to see you finally acting on your, DESIRES, Naruto" Kurama started a mental conversation with me. I was a bit surprised at the sudden female voice in my head because I was used to the male voice of the Kurama I knew. It'll take a long time for me to get used to her voice. I could feel her being quite amused just from her voice. Though why she is amused is beyond me at the moment. And what the heck does she mean by 'acting on my desires'?**_

_**"What do you mean Kurama?" I asked her as I was very confused and slightly annoyed at the possible implication.**_

_**"Ohhh, don't start acting so innocent now, I know about what you're doing right now. I can clearly tell that you feel quite a bit of attraction towards the woman on your bed. So, you decided to knock her out and have your way with her. You even sent two... copies of yourself to distract the guards outside so they don't disturb you during your fun. It's nice to see you finally using that 'cunning' side of yours for some of your selfish desires, although it maybe the desire of the flesh." She ended with a chuckle which could've been perceived as a perverted giggle, but I don't really care about that.**_

_**All I can say is that 'wow, just wow'. Because she's so right, yet, so wrong. I do feel some 'attraction' towards her, I do plan to 'have my way' with her, but not in the way she thinks. Although she is right about the guards, still, she got my reason behind that particular action wrong.**_

_**"Naruto, I wanted to ask you this for a while, when did you learn this... technique of making copies of yourself? I didn't see you use it before." she asked one of the most dangerous questions. For a moment I thought about whether it would be good to tell her about my previous life, at least some pieces of it anyway, but quickly dismissed it. I still don't trust her enough. I need to know about her more than what I know to trust her with this information. With that, I decided to lie to her and I already had a lie prepared for this.**_

_**"Do you remember the time I was in the hospital and you were... 'blacked out'? That's when the Hokage taught me." I said it casually. By 'black out' I was referring to the time she couldn't see or hear anything I saw or heard.**_

_**"Ah, I guessed as much, though I am quite surprised that, that old man has taught you anything." she replied, surprising me a bit. She already had an idea but she didn't antagonize me like the 'old' Kurama. I'm starting to like her. And she doesn't call me 'kit' every time. So, that's a plus one for her as I never really liked that name.**_

_**"Then you made a good guess. You are certainly smarter than I thought." I decided to praise her a bit instead of getting annoyed, to see what kind of reaction she'll give.**_

_**"Naruto, I may not be a HUMAN, I maybe a demon fox, but that doesn't mean I have to be a fool." she replied in a slightly annoyed tone. Oops, looks like I pushed the wrong button there. But, the reaction she gave is far better that the 'old' Kurama. His reaction would along the lines of,' how dare you insult me you mongrel? how could you even dare to think that I'm like you human... etc. etc.' In contrast to that, her reaction is much more calm. Sure I may have hurt her pride a bit, but she certainly didn't blow up like the 'old' Kurama did. That's a plus point.**_

_**But something caught my attention as I noticed something about what she said. "Hey Kurama, when you said you were not a human, it felt like you were implying that humans are the smartest beings." When she said the word 'HUMAN' in her previous statement, it sounded like sarcasm, and there was a hint of mockery in her voice. It sounded like she has something against humans. Actually that's not far from the truth. She was trapped in two different people, Uzumaki nonetheless, who tend to live a long life. So, she should be bitter about it. And somewhere near the beginning of her life, many people tried to take her power, make her their slave, which doesn't really help her hatred for humanity.**_

_**"Yes, " she stretched the word 'yes' , as if the current of the conversation is very annoying to her. "You humans are very prideful beings just because you are smarter than most around you. Forgetting the fact that there are higher beings other than you." Her voice sounded very annoyed proving that she doesn't hold the humans in a very high opinion.**_

_**"While most maybe like that, but ALL of them aren't bad." I tried to reason with her because she is insulting humanity and that includes me as well. In the past I would've just outright retorted, but since this one is different, I decided to try a different approach, as opposed to the one I tried with the 'old fox'.**_

_**I waited for a few moments for her reply, but I was only met with silence. Taking that as a queue for the end of conversation, I looked at the clock and 10 minutes of waiting was almost over. So, I picked her up in bridal style and got out of the apartment building. The ANBU guards assigned for my protection should be long gone and people don't usually come out in this part of the town after sunset. So, I can casually walk through the streets without worrying about being seen, but decided against it because I don't want to risk anything. I used the rooftops to get to the Forest of death. I jumped and ran while enhancing my body with chakra.**_

_**When I tried to jump to the first roof, I ended up using too much chakra and nearly jumped past the roof. But luckily I landed on the edge of the roof. Once I gained my footing, I looked back to measure the distance I jumped. Since I was used to using more chakra enhance a big body which was something I used to do in the past. But now my body is very small. So, I have to start with minimum amount of chakra, then climb my way up from there as I get used to it. This may take a while. In the past, I used to be physically fit enough to outrun a chunin who is using chakra boost. Based on what I've seen so far, this body is just as fit as mine was back then, which means I can perform same feats as I could back then. **_

_**Once I was in front of the forest, I stopped for a few moments to consider the possibility of meeting Anko Mitarashi here because this place is something like her territory, but quickly dismissed it because, right now she should be eating dango and chugging booze with Kurenai Yuhi.**_

_**Anko Mitarashi is a special jonin, which is just one rank below the jonin level. During my time she was the proctor for the second stage of the chunin exam. She is a student of one of the legendary ninja Orochimaru who has betrayed the village and a bearer of the cursed mark, although a prototype version if what I know is true. That caused her to be hated by more than half the villagers, civilian and ninja both. Because they believe that she is a spy working for Orochimaru(whether she is aware of it or not) and might betray the village just like her teacher. That hatred resulted in her never being promoted to full jonin status. In way she is like me, both of us are hated by the villagers. Although she led a relatively easier life than me.**_

_**Yuhi Kurenai is a jonin if the village. She is the best Genjutsu(illusion) specialist in the village. Thus earning her the title "Genjutsu Mistress of Konoha". She also has another title which is: " The Ice Queen" as she rejected the advances of every man very harshly and brutally with her illusions. But she finally settled down with Asuma Sarutobi, son of Hiruzen Sarutobi the Hokage. At least tried to anyway. Because he died when she was still pregnant with his child. Kurenai should be friends with Anko, well at least drinking buddies anyway.**_

_**With that done, I quickly made my way to the base. Once inside I quickly went to the room where I prepared the seals, well, to be accurate my clones prepared the seals and put her beside the seal circle I'll be using first. I don't have much time before the meeting begins. So, I'll have to work fast.**_

_**There are two different seal circles in the room for two different purposes. One is designed to act like a prison and the other creates a clone.**_

_**The one which creates a clone is a special cloning jutsu called 'Blood clone jutsu'. Just as the name implies, it creates a clone of the user or the targeted person which will be made of blood. Usually it takes a lot of blood and some flesh to create a blood clone. But when one doesn't have enough flesh and blood, he can compensate it with chakra, a lot of chakra. The clone created from this technique is a perfect copy of the user or the targeted person. If a blood clone is hurt, they don't disappear like shadow clones, at least not immediately anyway. But that's all I know. **_

_**Strangely, if I learned this technique I should've known every detail about it. Of course, a jutsu as valuable as this should be considered outright forbidden and S rank. Anyone would be willing to commit mass murder for this jutsu because this jutsu can be used for countering assassination, perfect infiltration as the one who donated the DNA doesn't necessarily have to be the one to control the clone. You can easily perform assassination with this jutsu.**_

_**But I just can't seem to remember where I learnt it no matter how much I try.**_

_**Anyway, as I don't have much time I quickly get a bowl a kunai from the storage. I take her hand and place it over the bowl and make a small cut on her palm. Blood slowly flows out from the cut and into the bowl. Once I got enough blood, I start licking the cut on her palm.**_

_**As an Uzumaki, my saliva and blood holds some sort of healing property. It's boosted by Kurama's chakra. Every Uzumaki has this ability more or less. But Karin Uzumaki took it up a few notches.**_

_**That reminds me of a long lost clan member of mine. Her parents ran away when Uzushiogakure(village of whirlpool) was attacked. They settled down in a village somewhere and Karin was born. When she was 9 or 10 years old, her village was attacked and she was orphaned. She was found by Orochimaru and he took her to one of his bases to work for him. During my time she entered the chunin exam as a genin of Kusagakure(village of grass) if what she said is true during the time she was interrogated. She somehow met Sasuke and became infatuated with him, well, to be accurate she became one of his fangirls. Except she followed him even after he killed Orochimaru and joined the Akatsuki with him. Thanks to Sauske and Orochimaru I lost one of my family members.**_

_**Once the wound on Mikoto's palm healed completely, I stopped treating it. When I examined her palm, a scar was left. Content with the result I placed her hand on the ground, took the bowl of blood and began my work. **_

_**I poured all the blood in the center of the circle and put the bowl away. I pressed my hands on the edges of the circle and began pumping chakra into it. I had to pour a fair share of my chakra into it. Soon the the word started moving and gathered under the blood. The blood started bubbling, expanding and rising. Soon it took a human shape and gained colour. Finally, what stood before me was a perfect copy of Mikoto with all her memories. All this happened in a matter a matter of minutes. Sometimes you have to wonder, just what is the limitations of the miracles chakra can perform if proper steps are taken.**_

_**She stood before me and blinked a few times. I looked at her for a few moments and ordered her," Go to the meeting and take her place." She obeyed me without question as the seal was set to make me the absolute master of the clone.**_

_**Before she left the base completely I created a shadow clone and immediately informed my 'distraction team' to leave the Naruto clone in the apartment and switch places with the Mikoto blood clone.**_

**_Then I turned to the still unconscious Mikoto and picked her up again to laid her down in the center of the second seal. I placed my index finger and my middle finger of my right hand and started to slowly injecting her with my chakra. Even tough I have a huge chakra reserve, I can't inject her with too much chakra. Because, one, it would harm her to have chakra in her body that is far beyond her capacity. Two, since it's not her chakra I'm pumping in her body, it could harm her body. Three, since it's not her chakra, most of it will get rejected after accepting a certain amount._**

**_The reason I'm pumping her with my chakra is because she will need all the chakra to survive all I'm about to put her through._**

**_Once I gave her enough of my chakra, I sat near her and waited for my shadow clones to finish the second part of the plan, 'The Switch'. The waiting should give me enough time to recover some of my chakra and give the unconscious Mikoto enough time to get adjusted to the chakra I gave her._**

**_Soon, almost twenty minutes passed by when I got the memories of the shadow clone posed as Mikoto. She left the my clone in the apartment. The ANBU assigned to protect me shouldn't pose any problem because, right now they have only one job: TO PROTECT ME. So, my clone who is posed as Mikoto shouldn't face any problem as she is a regular visitor and behaves friendly towards me. Because of that they will not follow her. She go somewhere deserted and dispel himself._**

**_After another ten minutes of waiting, I got the memories from my other clone. With all the distraction out of the way, I move to circle where Mikoto is lying. _**

**_Although I did do a bit of sealing before in my previous life for practice, I've never really done anything serious. So, I have very little confidence in performing this little work. Luckily, this ritual can be performed using one or more people AND they can be independent clones as opposed to normal clones._**

**_Once I'm in position, I immediately summon two shadow clones. They quickly move to take their place and wait for my signal to begin._**

**_I take few deep breaths to get ready. I look at each of my clones before giving the signal to begin._**

**_Immediately all three of us get on our knees and put our hands in front of us on the circle. All the letters start to glow signalling that it's begun. The clones are doing their job to keep the seal stable while I complete it._**

**_Almost a minute after we began, Mikoto's body slowly started to rise. Soon, her body was vertically floating few feet above the ground. Her clothes were fluttering slightly._**

**_After a few minutes, I could see bits of ice slowly forming on the ground beneath her. The ice formed very slowly, bit by bit. Soon, it the ground just beneath her was completely covered in ice. The ice didn't touch us as it didn't go anywhere near the edges of the circle. Slowly, the ice started rising as if it was 'growing' from the ground. The speed at which it was growing slow. So slow, that I didn't notice that it was actually 'growing' , but it was happening regardless._**

**_I have a few ideas on why it's happening very slowly. First of all, the seal is ice based. In order to form ice, you need both wind AND water type chakra. Since I only have wind type of chakra, I have compensate with more of my chakra. Second, this type of seal needs a steady flow of chakra. Now, normally seals don't need much chakra control, but sometimes there are exceptions. This is one of them. Since my control was never any good and it still isn't, it'll take a while before I'm anywhere near being complete with this._**

**_I push all thoughts to the back of my mind so that I can check on the progress of my work. As soon as I see it, I'm completely disappointed. Because it's been more than ten minutes since I started and the ice hasn't even risen one single inch. This is very disappointing sine I expected it to go much faster than this. So, there is only one conclusion to this, this will take a veeeryyy long time to finish._**

**_FLASHBACK END_**

Right now, I'm staring at the results of my labour. This special prison I just made was originally made for holding powerful beings inside it. Even though it's just a prototype version, it's still effective. The reason it's special because it's a self sufficient prison that feeds on it's prisoners. Once the target is captured and put inside the seal, the prisoner is trapped in a block of ice. The ice serves as the prison. This prison stats to feed off of the chakra of the prisoner in order to maintain it self. The more the prisoner struggles to free itself, the more chakra this prison feeds upon in order to strengthen itself. This prison was designed to capture and kill it's target very slowly.

Right now, Mikoto only has jonin level chakra reserve plus some of my own chakra. Since she was unconscious when put her in there, she won't be resisting and she just a human. So, the prison considers her weak. Since she is considered weak, the chakra drain will be very little as it will be only used to maintain the prison and nothing else. This way she should last at least one year in there while I make preparations. At the moment I can relax a bit.

As soon as I let my mind wander a bit from my finished work, I realized that I just did something something pretty stupid, insane and outright crazy. Because I just someone a jonin level ninja, inactive, but still a jonin level ninja, kidnapped her, switched her with a clone and locked her up in a icy prison. Without any care for the consequences I just committed multiple crimes. If anyone finds out about it I'm screwed for good.

Because not only did I just made a powerful sleeping drug, I also performed two high level jutsus. One was a clone jutsu and the other is a prison. Both of them done in the sealing arts style. These are things that a simple ten year old child shouldn't know. On top of that, I'm rumored and publicly believed to be the 'Demon Reincarnation' of the nine tailed fox. So, when there is the slightest suspicion of me being related to even the smallest of crimes, the rumors about me get blown way out of proportion. From the smallest suspect, I become the mastermind of the whole thing and everyone else is innocent. People start to believe those rumors, no, people BELIEVE those just like they believe the sun will rise from the east. I certainly lead a very pleasant life, don't I?

Thinking about it has brought my attention to the clone jutsu I just performed, the Blood Clone jutsu. I turn my to the place where seal circle was it's no longer there. But that's not a problem, I can draw . . . it . . . again. . .

ugh. . . thinking about it is really giving me a headache. It must be a really difficult jutsu if just thinking about it is giving me a headache. Anyway, getting a head ache from thinking about it isn't the strangest thing about it, it's that I can't really remember where I learnt it. I remember where I learned the icy prison from, but no matter how much I think about it, I just can't remember where I learnt the **Blood Clone** jutsu, and again, just thinking about it is just giving me a headache. I should just thinking about altogether for now.

Now, comes the most important question, what do I do now? Because clearly, I've done a big crime by kidnapping, imprisoning and sending an impostor of Mikoto Uchiha. Not only did I just commit these crimes against a member of the Konoha, a kunoichi but also against a member of the respected and powerful clan, the Uchiha clan. People definitely kill me if they find out about it. Even the old man might not be able to stop it this time, especially since it was committed against a member of the Uchiha. The current head of the Uchiha clan Fugaku Uchiha, who absolutely hates me doesn't make it any better. Here, he got pranked A LOT by 'him'. So, he hates 'him' and in turn hates me.

Then comes the next problem, I can't keep Mikoto in there forever, I have to let her out at some point. Sure, I could put back in again almost immediately, but that will just kill. Because once she gets out of that prison, she will be nearly out of chakra and she will need to recover her chakra. During that time she is bound to wake up and that is bound to create a lot of problems. Plus, keeping someone imprisoned doesn't sit very well with me, especially if it's is someone close to me(close to 'him' at least) as she is.

So, what do I do? how do I prepare myself? what measures do I take? What plan . . . do . . . I

I had to suppress the rising urge to smash my head on the nearest wall. Because everything I did, every action I took, everything I was hoping to achieve have been missing one crucial element, A PLAN. I didn't actually. So far I've been running around without any plan in mind. Granted I've always been running around without and it worked out all the time, but I've lost a lot of things. Many of my friends died including my very first regret, Haku and Zabuza. It always like that in the past. People used to call me an idiot. Now I know they were right.

I can't rely on my instincts and luck all the time. This time I've gotten a second chance, and I'm gonna use it properly. I'm not going to waste it this time.

So, in order to make a plan, first I need to know my situation properly. And in order to know my situation my I need to review what has happened to me first.

First of all, I'm in a different world. The last thing I remember from my world is that I was fighting Madara Uchiha and we finished each other off. So that means I've died and I've been suddenly sent to . . . here. That means I've left my old life behind.

That thought hit me real hard. I've known this for a while, but I just didn't realize it or acknowledge it. They are all gone. The ones I knew, they are all gone. Sure, I have them here as well. But they are not the same people. I never got to make my teachers truly proud of me, never got to say goodbye to my friends, never got to become hokage, and most important of all, I never got to give her what she deserves...

But now is not the time to mope around. If things are going as I think they are, then the Fourth Shinobi War is bound to happen. Everything will happen all over again and I won't be able to stop it. So, how do I do it?

First of all, I need a plan. What is a plan? A plan is the combination of steps you take in order to reach your goal.

What is my goal? First: prevent the fourth shinobi war. In order to do that I need to get rid of it's two main instigators, Madara Uchiha and Tobi/Obito Uchiha. And by extension, the Akatsuki.

Second: Keep losses to bare minimum, if possible, then keep it to zero. That means all those people I cared about, I mustn't let them die this time.

Third: LIVE, DAMN IT! Last time I did win the war but lost my life in the process. What good is a victory if you can'y live to enjoy it.

With these three goals in mind I have to take proper actions. My first priority is to get back my strength and then some more. While I may have the knowledge and skills from my previous life, my body just can't perform those feats I could perform back in the war, well, at least most of them anyway. But just my original strength won't be enough. I need more power than before if I am to save my friends and prevent the war, if not, at least win the war as quick as possible and with the least amount of casualties. So, I'll have gather more skills, learn more jutsus, gain more knowledge. I admit that, with my busted chakra control thanks to my HUGE reserve of chakra and my difficulty to remember seal based jutsu, it'll be really hard to do something like this. But, I'll find a way, I always do.

Making myself super strong is good and all, but it'll all be for naught if my friends aren't strong enough to survive the war. So, I'll have to do something for them to make them strong. But they don't know the things I do and I can't really tell them any of it. It's not about trusting them, it's whether they'll believe me or not. So, I can't really share my knowledge on future with them. If I do, they'll be quick to send me to the nearest mental asylum or, the chopping block considering how much the villagers hate me. If I do anything, I'll have to do them discreetly and subtly.

Anyway, First thing I need is information. Before entering any kind of conflict, you have to gather as much information as possible. Because the smallest piece information can save your life. It's the universal truth.

To gather information, first I'll start with the libraries in the village, both civilian and ninja. I may face problems in getting into the libraries but I'll think of something. Sure, I have a lot of scrolls in my base. I'll definitely learn from them. But it never hurts to get more.

That reminds me, I have to do something like an inventory check, to know what assets I have.

First of all, I am the son of Minato Namikaze and Uzumaki Kushina. My mother, who is a member of the famous and respected Uzumaki clan, left me with the perks of Uzumaki clan like: huge and more potent than most reserve of chakra, a somewhat healing factor, lengevity, golden chakra chains, enhanced chakra sensory capalities and natural born talent in sealing arts, at least was supposed to leave me with. But thanks to my dad for not being an Uzumaki, my Uzumaki blood is diluted. Hence I was only left with huge reserves of chakra with average potency(along with shitty chakra control, but that's to be expected), supposed longevity(which I have yet to prove as I have never really lived that long), a powerful healing factor( I think kurama's responsible for it),empathic(couldn't get the chakra sensors and what I have doesn't work in long range) and finally suspected talent in sealing arts(my father may have played a part in it as he was one of the greatest seal masters in the village. It's only suspected because I never really tried it). Though, that brings me to and important question. How the heck did I make the complex seals that were used today?

While these seals may not be overly complex, these were definitely above intermediate level. I shouldn't even know about these. I planned the things I did today during my stay in the hospital, but the plans came to me almost as if I made those plans some time ago and now it's time to follow them including the idea for the prison seal and blood clone seal. And how in the world do I even know they are above intermediate level?

I can think about them later because right now, there are other things I need to think about.

Second of all, I have the Nine-tailed demon fox Kurama sealed inside me. Which means I have access to it's chakra, which is a lot. Granted it's not purified and it is harmful. But, it's still extremely potent and there's a huge amount of it. I have the Yang half of it's chakra. I'll need to get the Yin half of it as soon as possible.

That leads to a troublesome topic. Because of the Yang chakra in my affected elemental affinity. Yang signifies youth, heat, dry, life, wind etc. Since I had Kurama's Yang chakra from birth, I got the wind affinity. If I had Yin chakra, I would've gotten water elemental affinity as Yin signifies water and as an extension I would have been possibly use the Golden chakra chains probably because my mother also had water for her main affinity. Well, whatever. No use crying over spilt milk.

Third, I have this whole library in my base where most of it is full of various jutsu, some I have never even heard of. This will be a great asset.

Fourth, I have a secret base in the training ground 44 which also known as Forest of Death. Here I can conduct various experiments. I can relearn and practice my skills here as well as learn new skills. Although that does bring up a problem. While the base maybe quite big, it's still too small for me. Here I can't practice advanced had to hand combat. I can't even practice my projectile skills here to my full potential since the practice room is quite small compared to most training grounds. So, I'll need to expand it. In order to do that I'll have to learn earth jutsu and learning that will be a bitch since I don't have earth affinity.

Fifth and final, My knowledge on the future. Well, it's not really all that dependable because during my time the Uchiha massacre happened when I was 8 years old. Now, it hasn't happened, YET, as I'm getting signs of it happening soon. So, this proves that here somethings maybe different from what I know. So far, I've only gotten signs of change in time, but no change in events themselves so far.

So, I'll have to use the assets I have right now to achieve my goals. I should get started on a detailed plan right now. But all further thoughts have been interrupted because of a loud growling sound that came from my stomach. It seems I'm hungry and I feel **REALLY **hungry. Hungry enough to eat a horse probably. Now that I've rested enough, I don't feel tired anymore. So I get up and move to get some food from the kitchen. Just as I am about to leave, I take one last glance at the sleeping Mikoto. This gave me a nagging feeling that I'm forgetting something. This brought a frown to my face but I quickly push away all thoughts because my stomach keeps reminding me that I have other priorities. With a shake of my head, I slowly walk to the kitchen.


End file.
